The story of Dutch painting

THE STORY
OF DUTCH PAINTING

MAN \VHH A FUR CAP

THE MLSKLM OF THE HERMITAGE. ST.

RKM BRANDT

THE STORY OF
DUTCH PAINTING

BY

CHARLES H. CAFFIN

author of
"how to study pictures," etc.

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1911

I '

C3

Copyright, 1J)09, by
The Century Co.

Published November, 1909

THE OE VINNE PRESS

TO THE PRESENT AND FUTURE ART

OF THE NEW REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THIS STORY OF THE ART OF THE OLD DUTCH REPUBLIC

IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR

New York, November, 1909

241668

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I The End of the Old 3

n The Old Order Changes 19

in Beginning of the New 35

IV Frans Hals 49

V Rembrandt Harmensz van Run 71

VI The Influence of Hals and Rembrandt .... 96

vii Dutch Genre 107

VIII Gerard Terborch, Jan Vermeer, and Jan Steen . 127

IX Biblical Subjects and Portraiture 150

X Landscape 169

XI Van Go yen and Hobbema 187

xn Jacob van Ruisdael 193

Index 201

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Man with a Fur Cap .... Rembrandt . Frontispiece

From a photograph by Braun, Clement & Cie.

FACING PAGE

Couple Drinking Jan Steen .... 21

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

Portrait of the Artist . . . Gerard Terborch . 28

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

Landscape with Fence . . . Jacob van Ruisdael . 37
Landscape with Oak .... Jan van Goyen . . 44

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

The Jolly Toper Frans Hals ... 54

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

Portrait of Nicolaes van der

Meer Frans Hals ... 59

Reunion of the Officers of St.

Andrew Frans Hals ... 67

The Syndics of the Cloth

Guild Rembrandt ... 78

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

Sortie of the Banning Cock

Company Rembrandt .... 81

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

Portrait of Elizabeth Bas . . Rembrandt .... 87

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

[ix]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PACING PAOF

Portrait of Hexdrickje Stof-

FELs Rembrandt ... 90

The Supper at Emmaus . . . Rembrandt ... 96

From a photograph by Braun, Clement «c Cie.

Peasants Round a Hearth . . Adriaen van Ostade . 110

From a photograph by Franz HanfstaenKl.

Old Woman Spinning .... Xicolaes Maes . . . 114<
Old Woman in Meditation . . Gabriel Metsu . . . 116

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

Lady at the Clavichord . . . Caspar Netscher . . 125

The Despatch Gerard Terborch . . 127

From a photograph by Franz Ilanfstaengl.

Officer Writing a Letter . . Gerard Terborch . . 129
Girl at the Window .... Johannes(Jan)Vermeer IS2

Head of a Girl Johannes{Jan)Vermeer 135

The Cook Johannes ( Jan) Vermeer 138

The Artist in His Studio . . . Johannes(Jan)Vermeer 141

From a photograph by Franz Hanfataonpl.

The Inn Jan Stcen .... 144

Portrait of Paul Potter . .J Bartholomeus van |

^ der Heist I '''^

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACINO PAOB

lMily of Admiral Pleter

PiETERsz Thomas de Keyscr . 166

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

IE Young Buel Paul Potter . . . 179

IE Avenue, Middelharnis,

Holland Meindert Hohhema . 190

sw of Haarlem Jacob van Ruisdael . 193

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

K-wooD Jacob van Ruisdael . 194

[E Mill near Wyk-By-

Duurstede Jacob van Ruisdael . 199

From a photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl.

[E Jewish Cemetery .... Jacob van Ruisdael . WO

Cxi:

THE STORY |

OF DUTCH PAINTING J

THE STORY
OF DUTCH PAINTING

CHAPTER I

THE END OF THE OLD '

ON the 25th of October, 1555, Charles V abdi-
I cated the imperial crown, ceding Spain and the
Netherlands to his favorite son, Philip II. The
;vent proved to be the prologue of a drama, which in
ts immediate aspects involved the decay of Spain and
he growth of Holland, but in its wider significance was
o be the beginning of a new era.

For the modern world dates from the seventeenth cen-
ury, and its pioneers were the Hollanders of that period.
Practically everything that we recognize to-day as char-
Lcteristic of the modern spirit in politics, religion, sci-
ince, society, industry, commerce, and art has its
prototype amid that sturdy people; being either the
lause or the product of their struggle for independence
md their self-development. Nor, in paying honor to the
Dutch, need we attempt to suggest that they were the
nventors of these characteristics. Most of the latter
v^ere, so to say, in the air. In the progress of things they

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

had been evolved. But our debt to the Hollanders is
that they attracted them and gave them practical appli-
cation, and thus set the world upon a definite path of
new progress. It is particularly with the newness of
their art that we are here concerned, but we will try to
study it in its relation to the material and mental en-
vironment of the nation itself, of whose newness it was
so immediate a product and so manifest an expression.

For it is in this way that the art of every country may
be studied with most interest and profit. Although there
will appear from time to time certain individual artists,
whose genius cannot be satisfactorily correlated to its
environment, but will indeed, as in the case of Rem-
brandt's, seem to be actually contradictory to it, yet even
they can be more fully comprehended through the very
contrast that they offer to the mass of their contempo-
raries, whose relation to their environment is readily
discernible. Apropos of this customary connection be-
tween the artist and the spirit of his time, may be quoted
that phrase of Richard Wagner's, that all great art is
produced in response to a common and collective need
on the part of the community. It may serve as an ex-
cellent touchstone for testing the quahty of this new
Dutch art which we are to study, so let us for a moment
examine its face value, leaving the fuller application of
its meaning to all the subsequent pages of this book.

In Wagner's mind great art, as he conceived it, stood
out in clear contrast against a background of less art, of
art which is produced in response to some more restricted
impulse than that of a conmion and collective need of the
people ; for example, in catering to the whims of fashion.

1*1

THE END OF THE OLD

luch was the major part of the art of France produced
1 the last days before the Revolution. The great mass
f the people were too abased by ill rule and exactions to
ave any consciousness but that of hunger, any common
oUective need but to fill their bellies. The only articu-
ite demand to reach the artists was from the ephemeral
w'arm of courtiers, sycophants, and, as we should say
D-day, "grafters," who buzzed in splendor and profli-
acy at court. For a moment the glamour of this life in-
pired a great artist, Watteau, who, however, it is to be
oted, was a foreigner. What he himself was he owed to
•"landers. To him the glamour of the French court was
ut a pageant, a spectacle passing before his eyes, leav-
ig his heart and conscience untouched. When, however,
rtists of French birth, reared in the home environment,
ollowed in his steps, they revealed nothing of Watteau's
iealistic detachment from the grossness of the theme,
ut became purveyors to the shallow profligacy of their
latrons. And to this day Van Loo, Boucher, and Fra-
:onard have no place with other old masters in the hearts
f the people ; they are still the favorites of fashion. Nor
ras it until the upheaval of the Revolution had precipi-
ated the gathering consciousness of a common and col-
ictive need on the part of the people, that French art in
he nineteenth century began to develop a vital response,
loreover, what was characteristic of French art during
he eighteenth century was generally symptomatic of the
rt of the whole of Europe. The latter had little or no
reative force, was essentially an art of more or less
eeble and perfunctory imitation. For the age itself was
lOn-creative; a period of exhaustion after the strenuous-

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

ness of the seventeenth centuiy, or of the slow forming
of new ahnements after the shattering of the old ones ; of
speculation and doubts rather than of convictions.

So the artists, feeling no spur in the needs of the mo-
ment, fell to imitating the Renaissance artists of Italy.
Among them, if we may anticipate the end of our pres-
ent story, were the Dutch. They, too, had exhausted the
inmiediate impulse of their own environment. War had
made them a world-power, and peace brought them the
foreign entanglements that maintenance of such a posi-
tion entailed. They were no longer under the com-
pulsion of an immense centripetal energy, a nation
concentrated upon its own self-reliance. They began to
spread themselves as cosmopolitans, aping the fashions
of the rest of the world ; and, as the fashion of the period
was to be Italianate, so the artists of Holland, lacking
at home the momentum of a common and collective need,
ceased to be a school of great original painters, and be-
came instead clumsy imitators of the splendors and
[ ^elevation of the Italian masters of the Renaissance.

After this glance at the nature and cause of decline
of Dutch art in the eighteenth century, we may return
with a better appreciation of what is ahead of us in our
study — the establishment in Holland in the seventeenth
century of a new art, the product of a new nation ; of a
group of original and distinguished painters who
formed, as Fromentin says, "the last of the great schools,
perhaps the most original, certainly the most local."

The course of our story, therefore, spreads before us.
It is to discover in what respect the Dutch School of the
seventeenth century was great, how it was original, and

THE END OF THE OLD

in what way its genius grew out of and responded to the
common and collective need of the Dutch people of the
period. Meanwhile there are the previous fifty years of
the sixteenth century to be accounted for, which brings
as back to the prologue of the drama, the abdication of
Charles V.

That monarch, born in Ghent and educated in Flan-
iers, had a special feeling of regard for his "dear Nether-
landers." Incidentally, they were the richest jewel in
the imperial crown, and he had drawn from them an-
nually two fifths of the enormous revenue that he
squandered in wars of ambition elsewhere. He had,
moreover, proved his love for them by systematic
slaughtering of dissenters, that the remnant might be
preserved within the fold of the Catholic Church. It
was Brussels, therefore, that he selected as the scene of
his abdication. Formerly the capital of the Dukes of
Burgundy, it had been under imperial rule the seat of
government of the vice-regents of the Netherlands; a
city of royal and princely palaces, immediately sur-
rounded by parks and game-forests, and fields and gar-
dens, teeming with opulence ; the royal center of a group
of cities. Of these Antwerp was the commercial chief,
the greatest emporiimi of trade in Europe, with an ex-
change in which five thousand merchants daily con-
gregated, and a port where five hundred vessels daily
made their entrance or departure. It was the distrib-
uting-point for the imports from the East and for the
products of the Netherlands : textiles of most sumptuous
fabrics as well as of plain cloths and linens, works of
gold and silver craftsmanship, agricultural and dairy
£71

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

produce from the rich polders of the northern provinces,
and fish from a hmidred thriving towns and villages
along the coast.

So when the emperor, enfeebled by excesses of action
and appetite, felt his grip of power slackening, and de-
termined to transfer this people of three million souls,
the most industrious, versatile, and liberty-loving in the
world, from his own pocket to that of his son, he saw to
it that the procee'ding should be conducted with a pa-
geantry of ceremonial worthy of the occasion.
• It was enacted in the hall of the renowned Order of
the Knights of the Golden Fleece, the walls of which
were hung with superb tapestries from the looms of
Arras, representing the Biblical story of Gideon. The
floor was occupied by official representatives of the prov-
inces, clad in the sumptuous bravery of costume that
distinguished this country and the times. Upon the dais
at one end, beneath a splendid canopy, three chairs
awaited the principals in the drama. Precisely at the
stroke of three, the emperor entered from the adjoining
chapel. Strange whim of Fate, he supported his gout-
ridden body by leaning on the arm of the man who was
eventually to be chief in undoing the policy that this
day inaugurated— William, Count of Orange. Behind
the emperor came Philip, and the regent. Queen Mary
of Hungary, the "Christian widow" admired by Eras-
mus, who on one occasion had written to her brother, the
emperor, that "in her opinion all heretics, whether re-
pentant or not, should be prosecuted with such severity
as that error might be at once extinguished, care being
only taken that the provinces were not entirely depopu-

US]

THE END OF THE OLD

lated." Following the principals, appeared the Knights
of the Fleece in full regalia, and a retinue of nobles,
many of them, Egmont, Brederode, Berlaymont, Aer-
schot, and others, destined to figure in the subsequent
drama of the Netherlands.

After a long oration by a member of the Privy Coun-
cil, depicting the bodily infirmities of the emperor, his
great zeal for his people's welfare, and the particulars
of the cession he was about to make, Charles himself
read a long recapitulation of his wars and trimnj)hs,
dwelt upon his failing strength, and commended his suc-
cessor to the good will and allegiance of his "dear Neth-
erlanders." At the conclusion of the speech the whole
audience was melted to tears and the emperor himself
wept like a child. Philip knelt in reverence, as his
father made the sign of the cross above his head and
blessed him in the name of the Holy Trinity. Then,
while the assembled host applauded he rose to his feet,
ruler by the grace of God, vice the emperor, of the
Netherlands, Spain, and her American possessions. But
he could not speak the language of the Netherlands ; his
acceptance of their allegiance and his own promises of
regard for their interests had to be made through an
interpreter.

Philip, as he assumed possession of the lives of mil-
lions, is characterized by Motley^ as "a small meager
man, much below middle height, with thin legs, a narrow
chest, and the shrinking, timid air of an habitual invalid.
In face, he was the living image of his father, having the

^ The author's indebtedness to Motley in this chapter, as in subsequent ones,
should not escape the reader's notice.

1^1

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

same broad forehead and blue eye, with the same
aquihne, but better-proportioned, nose. He had the
same heavy hanging Hp, with a vast mouth and mon-
strously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was
fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and
pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the lofti-
ness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was still,
silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the
ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embar-
rassed and even suffering in manner. This was ascribed
partly to a natural haughtiness which he had occasionally
endeavored to overcome, and partly to habitual pains in
the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate fondness for
pastry. Such," adds Motley, "was the personal appear-
ance of the man who was to receive into his single hand
the destinies of half the world ; whose single will was, for
the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual then
present, of manj^ more in Europe, America, and at the
ends of the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn."
Yet it may be doubted whether in the assembly pres-
ent on that memorable occasion there was a single person
who even dimly perceived the enormity of this idea. That
a nation, without being consulted, should be transferred
like a herd of cattle from one owner to another, for his
own use and emolument and even to be slaughtered at
his will, probably seemed a natural and right proceeding.
The fact emphasizes the immense and profound change
that during the ensuing fifty years was to take possession
of men's imagination. The seventeenth century was to
see a new idea of the rights of nations and of the rela-
tions that should govern a people and its rulers ; the com-

THE END OF THE OLD

mencement, in fact, of a new era of thought in its bear-
ing on life. But as yet the minds of all engaged in the
ceremony were possessed with the old thought, the brute
survival of Roman imperialism and of the medieval con-
flict of rival autocrats; the claim of a pope to exercise
supreme sway over the consciences of innumerable mil-
lions, and the contention of temporal potentates for
absolute control over the souls and bodies of their sub-
jects. Thought and life had been, and still were, based
upon the supremacy of the favored individual.

Let us note the effect which this idea had had upon the
art of painting, that we may better appreciate the change
which is to come over the latter, as the new idea begins to
penetrate life and thought. How did painting, notably
the fullest expression of it in Italian art, respond to the
common and collective need of men's lives and thoughts?
In what way did it embody the idea of the propriety and
desirableness of the subordination of all to the will of
one individual?

In the first place, the idea was fostered by the Church.
This is no place to attempt to discuss, on the one hand,
how far the Church in upholding this doctrine was ac-
tuated b}'- the desire of saving souls or, on the other hand,
to what degree it benefited the world. It is sufficient to
recall what an immense hold the Church had over the
lives and thoughts of men, and that to establish and
maintain it she employed painting as a handmaiden.
Thus, in response to the common and collective need of
the people, the favored subjects of painting were the doc-
trines and story of the Christian faith. The interiors of
churches were converted into vast picture-books for the

C"3

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

edification of the people, as well as into sumptuous
shrines for the celebration of the mystic drama of the
Mass. And, corresponding to the stately ceremonial of
the latter, its superb accompaniments of lights and vest-
ments, and its imposing spectacle of ordered ritual, the
altarpieces grew to be miracles of stately composition;
arrangements of form and color, light and shade, built
up with an artifice as imposing and moving in its effects
as that which had elaborated the Mass itself. So closely
is the genius of these paintings a product of the Catholic
Church's particular mode of emphasizing its faith that it
is evident, when men shall separate themselves from such
exposition of the faith, their common and collective need
will not demand pictures of this character. This will be
exemplified in th'e case of the Dutch. They will need
religious pictures, but neither of a ceremonial character,
nor, in view of their idea of worshiping in spirit and in
temples not made with hands, for the purposes of dec-
orating their houses of God. Their religious pictures
will be of a kind to affect the thoughts and lives of the
people in a simpler and more unpretentious way, perhaps
more intimately and personally.

But, while the splendor and dignity of the Italian
religious pictures were inspired by the religious fervor
that had continued from medieval times, they also re-
flected the new impulse which had made possible the
Renaissance: the New Learning, the study of the clas-
sics, particularly of Hellenic culture, preeminently of
Plato. From the latter, scholars and artists alike had
learned to think in terms of the abstract. To the artists
had been revealed the abstract idea of beauty— of beauty

D23

THE END OF THE OLD

as at once the symbol and the expression of the highest
good in life and thought. They were no longer satis-
fied simply to represent the sacred story and doctrines;
they would have their pictures beautiful, independently
of the subject; they would give the subject itself a higher
significance through the abstract beauty of the composi-
tions in which it was embodied. Hence the principles of
technical distinction that began to sublimate their pic-
tures, until they reached a degree of abstract as well as
material elevation that has never been, and, one imagines,
will never be surpassed. For it was the offspring of two
motives that may never again be found in wedlock — the
religious need and the need of expressing the enthusiasm
for the cult of the classics. The former may still be
operative, but the latter has been dissipated in the spread
of the democratic idea.

And what was the principle upon which was based the
classic ideal of abstract beauty, as it expressed itself in
Italian painting? It was the supreme motive of the
human form, as being, in its harmony of proportions and
its rh}i;hm of movement, the symbol and expression of
abstract beauty. Again it happened that the teaching
of the Church conjoined with the speculations of scholars.
This world was thought to be the center of the universe ;
man was the axis of the world. Even God was inter-
preted as concerned chiefly in the rewarding or punish-
ment of man, while to man all other created things were
subordinate. To the imagination of the Renaissance, as
of the Middle Ages, man towered up supreme against
the mere background of the universe. Small wonder if
some men, seizing the logic of this, aspired to be the

C13:

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

owners of the bodies and souls of their fellows, and
scarcely less that the others acquiesced ! It was a role not
only for popes, emperors, and kings to play upon the
stage of the world, but for every princeling and duke to
strut through on some smaller platform of a munici-
pality. It justified the Medici in their own eyes, and
made them almost of necessity the patrons of artists
who had accepted the supremacy of such as they for the
leading motive of their art. The painters, in fact, ac-
cepting the exclusive aristocracy of the human figure,
adopting as their prime motive its ideal perfection, and
building up compositions in which the figures were ar-
ranged in conformity with the rhythms and proportions
derived from such ideal perfection, necessarily achieved
an art that was essentially aristocratic, fitted for the
temples of an aristocratic church and the palaces of the
lay aristocracy. Yet, to repeat, it was also inspired by
a great religious need, so that it was fitted for the masses
as well as for their rulers.

Such was the great art of the world at the period when
Charles V abdicated. Yet even by 1555 the tide has
begun to ebb. Of all the great Florentines Michelangelo
alone remains, and he has ceased from painting and
sculpture. The giant brood survives only in the persons
of Titian, Paolo Veronese, and Tintoretto. The last
named will live out nearly the remainder of the century,
after which the art of Italy will be in the hands of "man-
nerists" and "eclectics," groups whose very names sug-
gest that they are but fanning a flame already dead.
Only the "naturalists" will have something in them of
the modern spirit.

THE END OF THE OLD

Meanwhile among the painters of the Netherlands
here is as yet little or nothing of the distinction that
rill grow between Hollander and Flemish. The prin-
ipal seat of painting is Antwerp, and its school has
Iready been Italianized. Even Lucas van Leyden, the
>ersonal friend of Diirer, and at first an original genius
nclined toward Gothic feeling, had before his death in
533 gone over to Italian influence. Admirably represen-
ative of this influence is the large triptych by Barend
an Orley, now in the Antwerp Museum. Its central
)anel shows The Day of Judgment. In the vault of the
ky Christ appears, enthroned upon a rainbow, his feet
esting on a globe. He is encircled by clouds, below
diich a ring of angels supports a cross, while to the
ight and left are seraphs sounding their trumps, and
.11 the distant air is aquiver with angelic forms. Hover-
ng midway between earth and sky is St. Michael, the
.rchangel. Down on the earth are the myriads of the
isen: the good on one side, in orderly bands, lifting
lands and heads toward heaven, and on the other the lost
ouls m a tumult of flames and smoke. In the side pan-
Is the works of mercy are represented ; grave personages
ninistering to the sick and the halt and the blind and the
lying, in a spot dignified by monumental architecture,
.hove which, seated on clouds, are ranged the Madonna
md the saints. The superb composition, unquestionably
uggested by that of the Disputd, is one which Raphael
limself need not have been ashamed to design. But the
igures that appear large in the foreground exhibit a
ealism of nudity and an individuality of separate char-
LCterization that bespeak the artist's Flemish origin.

CIS]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Notwithstanding his Itahan training he had still retained
his racial instincts for naturalism. But this fine work
was finished in 1525, and the artist died in 1542.

At the date we have selected as our starting-point, the
leading artists were Jan van Scovel, Antonio JNIoro, and
Pieter Pourbus; the last of Flemish birth, the others
born in the northern provinces. Though Pourbus es-
sayed religious subjects, the finest examples of which are
in Bruges, he is best known as a portrait-painter, in
which branch Moro also excelled. The latter, after
studying under Scovel, visited Italy, and upon his return
was recommended to Charles V, who despatched him to
Madrid and Portugal, and later to England to make a
portrait of Queen jMary, the wife of Philip II. Subse-
quently he was in the latter's service in Spain, but re-
turned to Brussels, where he found a patron in the Duke
of Alva. His portraits are distinguished by evidence of
truth to life as well as by their masterly, if somewhat
careful, handling. But it was Scovel himself whose life
best illustrated the tendencies of the time.

Born in Alkmaar in 1495, he studied in Haarlem, Am-
sterdam, and Utrecht; then in Cologne, Speyer, Stras-
burg, Carinthia, and Venice, from which last he went to
Jerusalem. Returning to Europe, he lived for a while
in Rome, where he was appointed superintendent of the
Vatican Gallery by his countryman, Pope Adrian IV.
On the latter's death he returned to the Netherlands, liv-
ing by turns in Utrecht and Haarlem, in one of which
cities he died in 1562. Greatly influenced by his sojourn
in Rome, he was the first of the strictly Dutch painters
to absorb the Italian influence. Among several exam-
[16]

THE END OF THE OLD

pies of his style in the Municipal Museum of Haarlem
the most remarkable is a portrait group of twelve
Knights Templars, with palm branches in their hands,
indicating that they have made the pilgrimage to Jeru-
salem. It is noteworthy both for its characterization
and as an early instance of what was to be a special
feature of Dutch art — the portrait group. His subject
pictures, mostly on religious themes, have the elegant,
non-committal character of work that was inspired by
outside impulse, though possibly in the landscape back-
grounds one may find a foretaste of the Dutch regard for
truth of natural surroundings. His work, indeed, like
his life, exemplifies the lack of originality and conviction
in tlje temper of the times. It was a period of suspense,
succeeding to the vigorous realities of old ideals, scarcely
ready for the development of the new. It was a prologue
to a new era.

The new art, when it arrives, will be in response to a
new common and collective need of a people, the prod-
uct, in fact, of a new attitude of thought toward life.
In place of the aristocratic it will be democratic, con-
cerned with the rights of all instead of the privileges of
the few. It will no longer set man in a pose of artificial
supremacy against the background of the universe, but
will begin to take account of his environment and to dis-
cover his true relation to it. It will be an era, not of
magnificent mendacity and superb hypotheses, but of
patient inquiry into the facts of life and of resolute ad-
justment of life to the facts. It will, indeed, be the
dawning of the scientific era. And so firmly will it
have taken hold of the thought and life of the then sepa-

en]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

rated provinces of the north, that, even as they have
parted absolutely from the old religion and politics,
stiU adhered to by the southern states, so they will be
impervious to the influence of the art by which the latter
continue to be represented. When, fifty years from our
opening date, Rubens shall return from Italy to give a
brief lease of lustier life to the Italian motive by the
vigor of his Flemish genius, the Hollanders of the seven-
teenth century will be absolutely unaffected by his in-
fluence. Their art will be as closed to the invasion of his
masterful genius as their country is to the inroads of the
German Ocean. Theirs will be an art not only new and
original, but certainly most local.

nis]

CHAPTER II

THE OLD ORDER CHANGES

THE forty-five years, following the abdication of
Charles V, yielded no indication of the harvest of
painting that was to signalize the succeeding
century. The earlier half of the period embraces the
work of Pieter Aertz, first of the distinctively Dutch
genre painters, and the latter half sees the growth to
manhood of the portrait-painters Michiel Jansz van
Mierevelt and Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn, while the
whole period covers the active life of Jan de Bray. He,
like the other two, was an honest but entirely uninspired
portrait-painter; and it was not until nearly the end of
the century that three men were born who were subse-
quently to become notable. These are Frans Hals, Jan
van Goyen, and another landscape-painter, less well
known, Hercules Seghers.

It was a period, indeed, solely of upheaval and prep-
aration, during which the ground was plowed, har-
rowed, and fertilized, while its old landmarks were being
removed, new boundaries established, and a new proprie-
torship asserted and exercised. It covered, moreover,
the whole of Philip the Second's miserable reign.

This monarch, tiring of the atmosphere of the Nether-
lands, soon withdrew to Spain, whence for the remainder
of his fife he attempted to govern the distant provinces

CIO]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

as a satrapy, through vice-regents, mihtary commanders,
and bishops. His aim, as became his father's son, was
autocracy over the hves, fortunes, and consciences of his
subjects. But, to do him justice, it was their own good,
as he saw it, that he labored and intrigued for : to purge
them of heresy and retain them within the fold of the
Roman communion. For nothing is to be gained in the
way of understanding the temper and conditions of that
day by regarding Philip as an inhuman monster.
Judged by the manner of our own time, he may seem to
have been; but, judged by the tenacity and unscrupu-
lousness with which men still cling to what they believe
to be their rightful privileges and pursue what they are
convinced is the dictate of their conscience, he is seen to
be but a natural product of the mental and social con-
ditions of his day. He was a recognizable and for a time
even tolerated part of a system that men as yet had not
thought of disturbing.

It was so, at first, that the citizens of the Netherlands,
even William, Prince of Orange, regarded him; They
held his overlordship sacred, even while they opposed
the acts of his official representatives. They expected to
be roundly taxed, but at the same time to have the ma-
chinery of their local government of free cities and Es-
tates-General unimpeded; and it was against the inter-
ference with this on the part of Philip's mercenaries that
they first remonstrated. For, in the pursuance of his
policy of riveting Roman Catholicism upon the Nether-
lands, Philip had induced the Pope to create more bish-
ops and archbishops, to uphold whose hands in the extir-
pating of heresy four thousand Spanish troops were to

1:203

-'«Bt^

'i

k

^^m

B^

COUPLE DRINKING

JAN STEEN

RIJKS MUSEUM. AMSTERDAM

THE OLD ORDER CHANGES

be retained in the country at the expense of the Estates.
The latter and the cities remonstrated, and the troops
were witMrawn, though the Inquisition continued its
fell work. So matters drifted until 1566, a memorable
year in the story of the rise and growth of Holland.

The Flemish nobles, though Roman Catholic to a
man, drew up a "Compromise" and pledged themselves
to resist the Inquisition. William of Orange, also a
Catholic, though he had married a Protestant princess,
Anna of Saxony, and would later change his profession
of faith, instituted a secret system of espionage in
Madrid over the acts and counsels of Philip. Then the
League of Nobles, Orange assisting in the wording of the
document, presented a "Request" to the vice-regent,
praying that the edicts against heresy and the Inquisi-
tion might be withdrawn and the management of affairs
restored to the Estates-General. Its presentation drew
from one of the vice-regent's counselors, Berlaymont,
the expression: "Is it possible that your Highness can
be afraid of these beggars?"

Three days later the dissentient nobles were enter-
tained at a feast by Brederode. When the enthusiasm
was at its height, and the guests were debating on a
name and a watchword, the host let drop among them
Berlaymont's contemptuous phrase. At the same mo-
ment he produced a beggar's wallet and bowl; and,
slinging the one over his shoulder and filling the other
with wine, called upon all present to drink to the Beg-
gars. The word was caught up, and from man to man
the wallet and bowl were passed round, until all had en-
rolled themselves in the Beggars' ranks. Then, at the

1:21]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

height of the excitement, the counts Orange, Horn, and
Egmont entered the room. They were compelled to
drink to the pledge and, although they immediately re-
tired, were henceforth marked for Philip's special revenge.
Later in the same year the "Image-breaking" oc-
curred in Antwerp. It was unpremeditated and in its
occurrence unguided: the spontaneous explosion of la-
tent passions smoldering in the mob ; the spark that kin-
dled it, the annual procession and parade of the image
of the Virgin. Scoffs and ribaldry were succeeded by
horse-play, which involved a rough-and-tumble fight
among some of the mob that filled the cathedral. The
excitement grew. The mob, surging in and out of the
building, began to mock an old woman who sold images
of the Virgin at the cathedral door. She retaliated in
kind, and from the bandying of words the mob and their
victim proceeded to the hurling of missiles. A riot was
averted for the moment by the arrival of the margrave
and senators ; but, when evening came, the cathedral was
still occupied by a mob, now bent on mischief. The image
of the Virgin was the first object of its fury, which, how-
ever, soon spread to a wholesale wrecking and desecra-
tion. The sacred vessels, the glory of stained glass,
and the intricate beauty of carved v/ork — every object
of beauty that had made this one of the richest shrines
of religious art in Christendom — were irretrievably de-
stroyed. The blind, unreasoning fury, thus aroused,
spread to other cities. Philip retaliated with another
fury, coldly and calculatingly horrible. Alva was de-
spatched with ten thousand troops, and the so-called
Spanish Fury was inaugurated.
[22]

THE OLD ORDER CHANGES

Its first victims were the counts Horn and Egmont,
William of Orange escaping into exile. A Council of
Troubles, or, as the Netherlanders called it, of Blood, was
established, and in the six years of Alva's stay eighteen
thousand six hundred persons were put to death. These
were irrespective of those who fell in armed resistance.
For in 1572 the Beggars of the sea took Brill, and a little
later drove the Spanish garrison out of Flushing. It
Mas the signal for revolt. Nearly all the cities of Hol-
land and Zeeland declared for William of Orange, and,
in an assembly of the Estates at Dort, voted funds for a
war, directed, however, even then, not against the sover-
eignty of Philip, but to the expulsion of his soldiery.
The fortunes of the patriots were checkered with more
defeats than victories, but meanwhile the Spanish opera-
tions were impeded by lack of money ; the troops depend-
ing upon the pillage of an impoverished country and the
occasional sack of a city, while the treasure-ships of
Spain were being intercepted and her commerce con-
tinually harassed by the Beggars of the sea. So Philip
sparred for breath, and through his vice-regent agreed
to the withdrawal of his troops, a treaty to this effect
being signed at Brussels in 1577.

William, however, was too convinced of the duplicity
of Philip to be a party to the treaty, and persuaded the
northern provinces to refuse their assent. The struggle
was continued, punctuated by the Union of Utrecht, in
which the Estates agreed upon a Dutch republic; by
Philip's rejoinder in the shape of a ban declared against
the life of Orange, with a price of twenty -five thousand
golden crowns upon his head ; and by the counter-move-

1:233

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

ment of the patriots. This was the declaration of Dutch
independence, formally issued at The Hague on the 26th
of July, 1581.

To ideas that had been slowly but steadily accumu-
lating under the pressure of dire facts a formulation had
at last been discovered and a name given. A new word
had been uttered in the world, that was, as the centuries
advanced, to be echoed and reechoed and to be fruitful
in newly advancing ideas. Comparable only to it, in
modern history, was the word spoken sixty years before
by Luther at the Diet of Worms. And now the doctrine
of the responsibility to itself of the conscience, with its
allied doctrine of religious freedom, had been completed
by the political doctrine of the responsibility of govern-
ment to the governed, and its allied doctrine of a nation's
right to the choice of its own form of government. But,
just as the idea must be in labor until the word for it is
delivered, so the word itself is but a battle-cry, the fruits
of which are painfully and slowly won. The labor of
Holland's actual independence, begun fifteen years be-
fore, had yet to be protracted sixty-seven years.

Hitherto all the hope of the patriots had centered in
William of Orange. In declaring their independence,
they offered him the crown. Partly to prove the disin-
terestedness of his motives, still more perhaps because he
believed that the final release from Spain could be ef-
fected only by putting the new state under the protec-
tion of France or England, he refused the dignity.
Fortunately, however, France continued to be a reed on
which no dependence could be placed, and the English
help, when it did come, was indirect. Meanwhile, Phil-
[24]

THE OLD ORDER CHANGES

ip's ban was still out against the Stadtholder, and an
attempt was made upon his life. He was shot in the
face, but recovered from the wound, to fall a victim,
however, two years later, to the pistol of one Balthasar
Gerard. The tragedy occurred on July 10, 1584.

It had removed the chief obstacle to Philip's success.
JNIaurice would worthily succeed his father in the gen-
eralship of the war ; but the brain and conscience, the un-
swerving patience and unselfishness, that had given some
reality of union to the rival elements of the United Prov-
inces, were buried with William the Silent. The exag-
gerated individualism of the several provinces and cities
would have put them at the mercy of Philip, had he not
himself been distracted from any singleness of purpose
by the same cause. His own exaggerated egoism, in-
flated with the ambition to be a world-power, prevented
him from concentrating his efforts upon the subjugation
of the republic. He still strove to force his influence
upon the affairs of France, and meanwhile made prepa-
rations to subdue England.

Thus Elizabeth, much as her Tudor instinct may have
shrunk from the idea of encouraging rebellion against
kingship, was induced by her advisers to make common
cause with the Dutch against Spain. She refused their
offer of the crown, but lent them money and some troops
under the command of Leicester. He proved inefficient
as a general, and, while a few names, such as that of Sir
Philip Sidney, stand out heroically, England's real con-
tribution to Dutch independence was indirect. It was
Drake's incessant harrying of Spanish ships and ports
and the destruction of the two Armadas that distracted
[25]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Spain, broke her power of offense, and hastened the
exhaustion of her waning resources. Thus the struggle
with the provinces continued on land, but became
more desultory, while of the sea the Dutch had prac-
tically undisputed mastery. The result was an acces-
sion of adventurous spirit that, while it failed in the
attempt to discover a Northwest Passage, established
settlements in the East Indies, wore down the competi-
tion of the Spaniards in the trade of those regions, and
inaugurated a condition of extraordinary commercial
prosperity.

^leanwhile Philip's long reign of forty-three years
was drawing to a close. In May, 1598, he handed over
the Netherlands to his daughter and son-in-law, the
Archduke Albert, and a few weeks later died. It is suf-
ficient for our present purpose to recall that the pro-
longation of the war on behalf of the archduke by vari-
ous generals, including Spinola, was stopped by the
bankruptcy of the attacking parties. A truce of twelve
years was agreed to in 1609.

Such was the background of events that preceded the
birth of a new art in Holland. A new nation had been
formed, and the circumstances which attended its forma-
tion had a direct influence in shaping the character of the
new art. That it involved a departure from the decora-
tive grandeur and the religious motive of Italian art was
an incident of the Dutch having repudiated alike the
Roman Catholic form of worship and the ceremonies of
a regal court. Almost equally incidental was the fact
that the artists were limited to subjects drawn from the
personages and conditions of life within their own bor-
1262

THE OLD ORDER CHANGES

ders; were influenced, in fact, to become realists. This,
I repeat, was incidental and not unexampled, for realism
was at the same time revived in Italy and continued in
Spain. The fundamental thing was to be the character
of Holland's realism; and this was a direct product of
the national events we have been describing. For it was
a symptom of the general character that the people had
been forming in itself during more than half a century
of nation-building. It was essentially a moral character.

I need hardly say that I do not use the word "moral"
in its narrower sense, but to the full extent of its sugges-
tion of a stout fiber of conviction and purpose that
habitually promotes integrity of conscience and deter-
mines the conduct of a nation or an individual. It is
nearer to our borrowed word, "morale." It is the prod-
uct, I take it, primarily of a great and worthy pride in
self, and then of loyalty to the best in one's self that such
pride engenders and makes necessary. It is what an
artist, least of all men, can afford to be without ; for his
work IS necessarily an expression of himself, and, if he
has not morality in the sense we have been describing,
his work will inevitably betray the fact and prove the
weaker for it. No artist in any medium can maintain a
bluff. Even if it hoodwinks his contemporaries, poster-
ity will "call it."

Now, in the case of Holland, the struggle for a great
principle, persevered in against all discouragements, had
gradually established in the nation just 'such a morality,
which during the years of the truce and for some thirty
years later was to demonstrate its value in practically
every department of human activity. To higher learn-

1:27:

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

ing and research, to the practical affairs of Ufe, such as
manufactures, commerce, banking, engineering, agri-
culture, and dairy-farming, to questions of disease and
hygiene, and to the systematizing of the legal relations
as well of nations as of individuals, the Dutch brought
the application of a new principle, substituting for em-
piricism and laissez-faire the method of approach and
treatment that we now call scientific.

It is a term, by the way, that from time to time has
been assumed to be antagonistic to morality ; whereas, if
properly considered, it should and does surely represent
a morality of the most exacting and, frequently, the most
disinterested kind. One after another, then, the Dutch
in those days of newly realized nationality confronted
the problems of intellectual, material, and social prog-
ress, bringing to their study a keen analysis, and han-
dling their solution with integrity and thoroughness.
With morality such as this conspicuously abroad in the
community, it would have been strange if her artists had
not reproduced it in their own special field ; if to direct-
ness and sanity of vision they had not brought a scrupu-
lous artistic conscience, that resulted in integrity and
thoroughness of craftsmanship. That certain of them
at some period of their careers deviated, as we shall see,
from this high standard does but emphasize the existence
of the latter, which, too, was reached, not by a few in-
dividuals, but by the artists as a body ; so that in no other
school of painting can you find such wide-spread excel-
lence of technique. This, indeed, if we may anticipate the
sequel, proved to be one of the causes of the school's sub-
sequent decline. Technique came to be pursued as a mo-

1:28]

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

GERARD TERBORCH

HAGUE MUSEUM

I

THE OLD ORDER CHANGES

tive. But this was itself a symptom of a deeper cause — the
freshness of the original motive had been outworn, its
vigor slackened. The nation itself had by that time lost
the simple directness of its early ideal and become enam-
oured of the sophistries of a world-wide ambition.

But to resume the thread of the story. At the com-
mencement of the new century Hals was sixteen years
old; Daniel Seghers, eleven; Van Goyen and the por-
trait-painter Thomas de Keyser, four. The train, in
fact, was already laid for a new kind of portraiture and
for a new motive in painting— that of naturalistic land-
scape. Otherwise the men destined to be the most repre-
sentative of the new school were as yet unborn. With
the opening of the century, however, their names ap-
pear thick and fast, and continue to arrive for forty
years; after which the list of those conspicuous in the
annals of the Dutch seventeenth-century school ceases.
Dating, therefore, from Hals's birth in 1584, the period
covered is fifty-six years.

It is perhaps convenient for the purpose of assisting
the memory to divide the first forty years of the new cen-
tury into two parts: the first ending in 1621, with the
conclusion of the twelve years' truce; and the second
with the marriage, in 1641, of the Prince of Orange's
son, William, to the eldest daughter of Charles I of Eng-
land. The historical aspect of these two periods in rela-
tion to the story of art may be considered after we have
reviewed the names of the principal artists whose births
they contain.

The earlier division, then, includes the greatest name
in the art of Holland, one of the greatest in all art, that

129-2

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

of Rembrandt, who was born in 1606. The latter is the
birth-year also of the flower-painter Jan van Heem,
while the preceding years of the century disclose the
names of the marine-painter Simon de Vlieger and the
landscape-painters Salomon Ruisdael and Aert van der
Neer, and Palamedesz, painter of genre. The year 1610
gives us Van Ostade and the landscape-painter Johannes
Both; 1611, Ferdinand Bol and Willem van de Velde
the Elder; 1613, Wouwerman and Gerard Dou; and
1615, Govert Flinck and Jan Wynants.

Here we may check the routine of enumeration to note
another great name, one of the most distinguished of the
Holland School. It is that of Gerard Terborch, born in
1617. He is followed, in 1619, by the landscape-painter
Philips Koninck and the portrait-painter Bartholomeus
van der Heist. To them succeed in 1620 Aelbert Cuyp
and Nicolaes Berchem, followed in 1621 by Eeckliout
and Allart van Everdingen.

This enumeration does not pretend to be exhaustive.
The aim has been rather to include as few names as pos-
sible, so as to simplify the study by concentrating atten-
tion from the start on those which are most representa-
tive and most often met with. After familiarizing
one's self with these, it is comparatively easy to add to
their number and to place the newly acquired ones in
their chronological relation to this preliminary list. The
same motive determines the selection for the second
period.

It begins in 1624 with Carel Fabritius; but the fol-
lowing year discloses a name that in the Holland School
stands very close to Rembrandt, Jacob Ruisdael, and
11303

THE OLD ORDER CHANGES

another name of great reputation, Paul Potter. To
1626 belongs Jan Steen. After the birth of this artist
there is a pause of four years, when Gabriel INIetsu
and the still-life painter Kalf appear, to be followed two
years later, in 1632, by a notable trio, Nicolaes INIaes,
Pieter de Hooch, and the most distinguished, Jan Ver-
meer of Delft. With 1633 comes the marine-painter
Willem van de Velde the Younger, and mth 1635 Frans
van IVIieris; while 1636 yields Adriaen van de Velde,
landscape- and figure-painter, and the painter of birds
and poultry, JNIelchior d'Hondecoeter. Finally, the
painter of architecture, Jan van der Heyden, is born in
1637; Hobbema in 1638, and in 1640 the painter of ani-
mals and dead game, Jan Weenix.

If one glances back over the names of these two
periods, it is to note some interesting suggestions. In
the first place, one of the earliest names. Van Heem, and
the last of the list, Weenix, represent painters of still-
life. The fact emphasizes the hold which this branch of
painting had upon the interest alike of the painters and
their public, and the part it plays in the general work of
the school. In our own day there is perhaps a tendency
to underestimate the interest of still-life. "Only a pic-
ture of flowers or fruit or game," represents the feeling
of many people on the subject. It is an attitude of
mind, resulting from the habit of relying on the mind to
appreciate a picture. Thus, as a subject for mental
study, a bunch of flowers, a mass of vegetables, pots and
pans and the like, may not be interesting. On the other
hand, I think it would be a mistake to assume that the
Holland public of the seventeenth century were free

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

from this tendency; or to suppose that they regarded a
picture as a thing to be viewed and to be appreciated
solely through the abstract pleasure that is communicated
by the joy of sight. As a matter of fact, they were actu-
ally interested in the objects represented in the still-life
pictures. They were enthusiastic cultivators of flowers
and vegetables, keen sportsmen, and shared with the wo-
men of their families a pride in all the objects of decora-
tion and utility in their homes, so that even utensils of
ordinary use were made and kept in a state of being orna-
mental. Accordingly, with that simple directness, char-
acteristic of the race, they took a positive interest in
the representation of such things. The latter were sub-
jects of importance in life; accordingly, since their art
was so intimate an expression of their life, they were wel-
comed as subjects for pictures.

The public also applauded the skill with which such
subjects were rendered by the artists, and the latter,
since still-life presented excellent opportunities for the
display of craftsmanship, were glad enough to recipro-
cate the popular taste. Thus resulted what one notes
as a second point in the consideration of Holland still-
life painting: namely, that the artists freely introduced
objects of still-life into their portraits. I cannot cite a
more typical instance than the earliest military group-
picture by Frans Hals in the Haarlem Museum. Here
the viands and furnishings of the banquet are rendered
with at least as much gusto as the heads, and for the
present with more assurance. Thirdly, it is easy to trace
the influence that this joy in the representation of still-
life had upon the evolution of genre painting in the Hoi-
[32]

THE OLD ORDER CHANGES

land School and upon the particular character that it
assumes. In fact, the interest in still-life subjects, with
the influence it had upon the methods of the artists, was
a most important factor in the development of the Hol-
land School. Closely allied to it is the interest in por-
traiture.

How radically this interest affected the art of Holland
may be gathered from another glance at the foregoing
list of names. It is in the beginning of the new era, in
the earlier division of names, that all the famous por-
trait-painters appear. Not to mention Rembrandt,
whose genius was of the universal kind, embracing in its
single scope the separated motives of other artists, we
find the names of Hals, Mierevelt, Ravesteyn, Van der
Heist, Terborch, De Keyser, Cuyp, Bol, and Flinck.
On the other hand, among the names in the second list,
selected without any parti pris, there is not one of first
or even second rank as a portrait-painter; only men
like Maes and Netscher, who were primarily and far
more worthily genre painters.

For it is the genre painters who form one of the chief
distinctions of the later generation. It is true that Dou
belongs with the eailier, and he was and still remains
popular. But he is not in the same class as Vermeer and
Steen, nor as Maes, Metsu, and De Hooch, scarcely as
a painter even to be reckoned with Ostade. Indeed, he
is nearer to Van Mieris and Netscher, the men in whose
hands genre sank to a distinctly lower level. The only
example in the earlier generation of a great genre
painter is Terborch, who presents the exception, and a
brilliant one, to the generalization I have suggested.
1332

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Another point of interest to be derived from this sum-
mary is the place that landscape takes among the mo-
tives of the Holland School. We see, in fact, that it
figures at the beginning of the new era and continues to
the end. Seghers and Van Goyen precede the century,
which immediately opens with Salomon Ruisdael and
Aert van der Neer, followed in the earlier division by
Both, Wouwerman, Koninck, Cuyp, Berchem, and Van
Everdingen. Then the second period opens with the
birth of Jacob Ruisdael, and, including Potter, Adriaen
van de Velde, and Vermeer (the last named with one
known example), ends with Hobbema. Similarly, in
the allied department of marine-painting, the century
opens with Simon de Vlieger; Willem van de Velde the
Elder follows, and in the later period the art is repre-
sented by Bakhuysen and Willem van de Velde the
Younger.

As a matter of fact, in each field of motive the seed
was laid in the beginning of the period under examina-
tion. What followed was a rotation of crops and an
enriched development of each variety.

18*2

CHAPTER III

BEGINNING OF THE NEW

THE breathing-time given by the truce allowed
play for dissensions among parties and for the
ambitions that had crept into the house of
Orange. Meanwhile it favored the development that
during the next hundred years made Holland the richest
and most advanced country in Europe.

To commemorate the raising of the siege of Leyden,
the patriots in 1574 had founded a imiversity in that
city; to inaugurate the truce, they pumped dry the
Beemster Lake and added eighteen thousand acres to
their territory. The two acts, and even the order in
which they came, were characteristic of this extraordi-
nary people. They were the most enlightened of their day
and brought their intelligence to bear upon all the practi-
cal concerns of life. The renown of their university ex-
celled that of Paris, Oxford, or Cambridge ; their schol-
ars laid the foundations of international law and modern
medicine, and their printing-presses produced more
books than those of the rest of Europe combined. Their
development in painting is our present subject, but they
also carried their love of the beautiful into the design
and craftsmanship of the ornaments and utensils of the
home, and into the laying out of gardens and the culti-

CSS]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

vation of flowers. Meanwhile their looms, manned by
weavers who had fled from Flanders to avoid religious
persecution, produced the finest fabrics in Europe ; their
workshops exported the best mathematical, astronomi-
cal, and nautical instruments ; and their discovery of the
art of cutting and polishing diamonds gave them a mo-
nopoly of this business. The Bank of Amsterdam was
founded in the first year of the truce and soon became
famous for the amount of its deposits and the volume of
its transactions, while the city itself became the chief
distributing center for the commerce of the Old and the
New World.

Meanwhile in agriculture the Hollanders displayed a
similar combination of scientific resourcefulness and in-
domitable energy. They discovered the value as fodder
of certain "artificial" grasses and clovers, and experi-
mented with these to the immense improvement of their
cattle and dairy produce; and by the application of
intensive methods to the cultivation of the land so in-
creased its productivity, that it became capable of sup-
porting three times the population which had before sub-
sisted on it. Further, by promoting the cultivation of
the potato and other root-vegetables they wrought a sig-
nal improvement in the public health, since the variety
of diet, thus made possible in winter, stamped out the
scurvy and leprosy which had been the scourge of Hol-
land as of other countries. At the same time they devel-
oped their fisheries and introduced improved methods of
drying and treating fish; enlarged their merchant ma-
rine, so that they became the chief carriers of the world ;
and pushed their commerce with the Indies, until they

1:363

^

BEGINNING OF THE NEW

possessed a practical monopoly of the most lucrative
trade of those times, namely, that of spices.

JNIeanwhile, as a reverse to this story of national prog-
ress, were the religious and political dissensions that
crept into the commonwealth. Protestantism, after pre-
senting a solid front to Romanism, now found itself cleft
by the sect-rivalries of Arminians and Gomarists; and
these in time gave color and opportunity to the ambition
of Maurice. No disinterested patriot like his father,
William the Silent, the second Stadtholder intrigued for
his personal aggrandizement, and stained his memory
by the judicial murder of the old patriot-statesman
Barneveldt. On the other hand, of better memory was
his service to art. In 1611 he commissioned Ravesteyn
to paint a series of portraits of officers. These and other
pictures that he gathered adorned his palace, and, added
to by his successor, the Stadtholder Frederick Henry,
became the nucleus of the collection that, accumulating
through various vicissitudes, now occupies the ]Maurits-
huis, as the Royal Museum of The Hague.

The lack of cohesion, of which these dissensions were
a symptom, and that had always been close to the sur-
face of unity owing to the excessive individualism of the
cities, was reflected in the new art. Small as was the
total area of the country, it supplied a number of artistic
centers, each with its group of artists, who had sufficient
in common to constitute a school. Under the influence
of tradition, or more often of some conspicuous member
of the group, they presented similarities of motive that
distinguished their choice of subjects and even their
method of painting. Thus we may note a school of

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Haarlem, of Leyden, of Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft,
Dordrecht, and Utrecht. There was a certain rivalry
between the schools of these various cities, but, on the
other hand, a centripetal force that tended also to draw
them together. Communication was easy in so small a
country, and, moreover, the growing importance of
Amsterdam as the commercial capital made it gradually
a center also of art. The result was a happy combina-
tion of homogeneousness and individualism. The paint-
ings of the period possess a common excellence, of a kind
so distinctive that you may recognize at once a picture
as belonging to the School of Holland, and yet they
reveal so many individual traits that the homogeneous-
ness is not characterized by monotony.

Accordingly, if we do not make the mistake of trjang
to surround the school of each city w^th an arbitrary
wall, separating it conclusively from other cities, we may
get many suggestions that help to classify our compre-
hension of the Holland School as a whole. I propose,
therefore, to distribute the artists, whose names we have
already reviewed, according to their individual schools;
to the cities in which they worked, and, in most cases,
were born and educated.

Under the head of Utrecht, then, we find the names
of Heem, Hondecoeter, and Weenix, all three of them
still-life painters. But, while this points to the fact that
the distinguishing characteristic of the Utrecht School
was the painting of flowers, dead game, and birds, it is
not to be assumed that still-life is unrepresented in the
other schools. The catalogues contain the names of no
less than a hundred painters in this department, distrib-

CSS]

BEGINNING OF THE NEW

uted throughout the various cities, and, as time goes on,
congregating especially in Amsterdam. To the latter
Weenix and Hondecoeter migrated ; and it is interesting
to note how the change of locale affected their art. Cor-
responding to the wealth of the capital, their pictures
became much larger, designed as superb decorations for
the walls of sumptuous houses.

The School of Haarlem includes the following: the
portrait-painters Bray, Hals, and Terborch, the last
also a genre painter, like Ostade of this city; and the
landscapists Salomon and Jacob Ruisdael, Wynants,
Everdingen, Wouwerman, Esaias van de Velde, and
Berchem. The array of names, in the first place, sug-
gests the importance of Haarlem at this period, as a
center of commerce, society, and art. We may remem-
ber that it was particularly given to "corporation" pic-
tures, as its museum to this day proclaims in the works
of Bray and Hals, while Terborch, commencing under
the influence of this place, later on painted the equiva-
lent of a corporation picture in his Peace of Miinster,
now in the National Gallery. Another clue to be de-
rived from this grouping of names is that Hals, the
acknowledged leader, exerted a direct influence on Ter-
borch and Ostade; and through the latter upon Steen,
who came over from Leyden to be Ostade's student.

Further, we recognize that this school was as fertile
in landscape as in portraiture. With the exception of
Van Goyen of Leyden, the founders and chief expo-
nents of the art were associated with Haarlem; even
Hobbema of Amsterdam, through his having been a
pupil of Jacob Ruisdael. The latter 's career, also, is

[393

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

made clearer by this classification. Haarlem was his
birthplace and the scene of his personally inspired work.
When, discouraged by lack of recognition, he moved to
Amsterdam, it was the example of his fellow-townsmen
that made him change his own style. For Everdingen,
who had visited Sweden, was painting romantic scenes
of waterfalls and rocks, and Ruisdael, observing how
they found favor with the Amsterdammers, abandoned
his study of the Holland landscape to invent similar sub-
jects. Finally, we may connect Wouwerman with two
of his townsmen. From Wynants he learned the land-
scape, and by Hals was influenced in his incomparable
treatment of the accompanying groups of figures.

The School of Leyden boasts the great name of Rem-
brandt, who, however, moved finally to Amsterdam in
1631, when nearing his twenty-fifth year. After him
the names that appear in the School of Leyden are: Dou,
Steen, Metsu, JNIieris, and Van Goyen; all of them, the
last named only excepted, genre painters. Dou studied
with Rembrandt, who was seven years his senior, during
the last three years of the latter's stay in Leyden. He
himself became the teacjher of Gabriel Metsu, who, how-
ever, was also influenced by Frans Hals, and also, after
his move to Amsterdam, where he died, by Rembrandt.
Dou was also the instructor of Frans van Mieris. Steen,
on the other hand, the greatest of the Leyden group,
escaped the influence of Dou, becoming, as we have seen,
a pupil of Van Ostade at Haarlem, and later of Van
Goyen, after the latter had moved tc The Hague. Van
Goyen, though born in Leyden, is associated also
with the Haarlem School, for after he had had several

BEGINNING OF THE NEW

masters, including Van Swanenburch, in Leyden, he
served apprenticeship to the Haarlem painter Esaias
van de Velde. Moreover, by the time that he had mas-
tered his art, he settled in The Hague. Thus the char-
acteristic of the School of Leyden remains its genre.

The names from our list that the School of Delft in-
cludes are those of Mierevelt, Fabritius, Van Aelst,
Palamedesz, De Hooch, and, most distinguished of all,
Vermeer. Mierevelt, as a portrait-painter, found better
opportimities for his art at the seat of government, and
became a member of the Guild of Painters of The
Hague. Carel Fabritius was early attracted to Amster-
dam by the fame of Rembrandt, and only returned to
work in Delft during the last four years of his short life
of thirty-four years. Van Aelst, also, the still-life
painter, after oscillating between Delft and Florence,
finally settled in Amsterdam. So did the portraitist and
painter of fashionable genre, Palamedesz. He derived
help at first from Mierevelt and was influenced by Hals,
and in 1621 his name appears as a member of the guild
in Delft, but he spent the latter part of his life in Am-
sterdam. This city also absorbed De Hooch, who, be-
fore he finally settled there, had been influenced by Rem-
brandt. In fact, his participation in the School of Delft
was limited to the two years in which he was a fellow-
member of the guild w^ith Jan Vermeer. They were
of the same age, but Vermeer was his senior in the
guild by two years, and it is scarcely to be questioned
that the influence of his refined feeling and exquisite
craftsmanship must have affected De Hooch consider-
ably. In contrast to the flux of change that characterized

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

the lives of the other members of the Delft School is the
consistency of Vermeer's attachment to the city of his
birth. We shall discuss his art later. Here it is enough
to recall that his only teacher was Carel Fabritius; but
that his art, as it developed, was individually his own,
conspicuously unique, and so admirable that when one
speaks of the Delft School it is to think almost exclu-
sively of its greatest artist, Jan Vermeer of Delft.

In connection with The Hague it is more correct to
speak of a group than of a school. Among the artists in
our list the only one born actually in this city was Rave-
steyn, although it is true that Schalcken's native place
was a village in the vicinity. But the same reason that
made the former constant to the seat of government at-
tracted thither other artists. The Hague was also a cen-
ter of society and fashion. 3Iierevelt found there a mar-
ket for his portraits, Van Goyen for his landscapes, and
Netscher, Schalcken, and De Hooch for genre pictures.
The last named spent some years there, but retired to
Amsterdam. The rest continued working at The Hague
until their deaths. Among them Van Goyen is easily the
most distinguished. The rest are rather symptomatic of
the atmosphere of their surroundings. The portraits
by Mierevelt and Ravesteyn have the perfunctori-
ness of official and society products, eminently digni-
fied and comme il faut, irresistibly uninteresting, while
the genre of Netscher and Schalcken is petty and frivo-
lous by comparison with that of the older and greater
painters, and Netscher's portraits are frequently in-
sipid as to character and over-occupied with the niceties
of millinery.

n42]

BEGINNING OF THE NEW

Of Dordrecht or Dort our list contains only one name,
that of Aelbert Cuyp, whose versatile genius embraced
portraiture, landscape and animal painting, genre, still-
life, church interiors, and marines. We may add one
other name, that of Hoogstraten, not, however, so much
on account of his art as because he was the George Vasari
of his day, the historian and story-monger of the painters
of Holland in the seventeenth century.

It remains to summarize the School of Amsterdam.
As may have been gathered from the foregoing, it was
rather an aggregate of artists, drawn thither by two
causes: the wealth of the commercial capital and the
fame and influence of Rembrandt. The latter, as we
have seen, moved finally from his native city, Leyden,
to Amsterdam in 1631, when he was in his twenty-fifth
year. Two years later he painted The Lesson in Anat-
omy, and pupils began to flock to him; among the most
notable being Ferdinand Bol, Govert Flinck, Eeck-
hout, Metsu, Nicolaes Maes, Fabritius, and De Hooch.
On the other hand, among those w^hom the importance
of the city attracted were several from the neighboring
School of Haarlem ; the portrait-painter Van der Heist,
for example, and the landscape-painters Berchem, Jan
Wynants, Everdingen, and Jacob Ruisdael ; while from
Utrecht came the still-life painters Hondecoeter and
Weenix, and from Delft Van Aelst.

On the other hand, the native-bom artists of Amster-
dam included that early genre painter Pieter Aertz ; the
portrait-painter Thomas de Keyser; and the landscap-
ists, Hercules Seghers, Philips Koninck, Adriaen van de
Velde, Aert van der Neer, and Hobbema. But the dis-

1:433

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

tinctively local characteristic of the school, situated as it
was in this great emporium of foreign commerce, is its
group of marine-painters ; among whom we may mention
Simon de Vlieger, Bakliuysen, and the elder and the
younger WiUem van de Velde. Their pictures are par-
ticularly interesting for the faithful and spirited repre-
sentation of shipping: fishing craft, coasting vessels,
East-Indiamen in harbor, and men-of-war in action.
The pictures of these last are the most important of the
occasional indications to be found in Dutch painting that
throughout this period of productivity in the arts of
peace the country was involved in war. Not that the
soldier is absent from pictures. On the contrary,
he figures frequently, but usually in the intervals of
fighting, while enjoying the pleasures of a furlough;
though occasionally we come upon some positive hint of
the prevailing disturbance, as in a scene of bivouac, or of
peasants and soldiery fighting, or of soldiery attacking
a traveling-coach or party of hunters. Generally, how-
ever, the subjects of the Holland pictures are rather sug-
gestive of a prof oimd tranquillity.

As a matter of fact, by the time that painting reached
its maturity, Holland had ceased to be the battle-ground.
She had become rather a focus point of intrigue, in-
volved in distant complications with France, Germany,
and England. There are in the Rijks Museum at Am-
sterdam two pictures which hint at this: The Fishers for
Souls, by Adriaen van de Venne, and The Enraged
Swan, by Jan Asselyn.

The former, painted in 1611 during the truce, repre-
sents a river dotted with boats, the occupants of which
[44]

BEGINNING OF THE NEW

are fishing for the men and women that swim aromid
them, while the banks are crowded with spectators. On
the left are serried ranks of Hollanders, closing round
those in whom they have confidence, namely, the Princes
of Orange, Maurice and Frederick Henry, James I of
England, and the young King of France, Louis XIII.
On the opposite bank a less orderly mass of people con-
fronts them, headed by the Archduke Albert and the
Duchess Isabella, to whom Philip had made over the
sovereignty of the Netherlands. So far the allegory
epitomizes the political situation in which the Hollanders
found themselves. Meanwhile, the religious aspect of
the situation is suggested in the circumstances of the fish-
ing, which seems to refer both to the old struggle be-
tween Catholicism and Protestantism and also to the
new one arising out of the dissension in the latter be-
tween the rival sects of the Gomarists and Arminians.
The happy outcome of it all is prefigured in the rainbow
that spans the scene.

To appreciate the allegory involved in The Enraged
Swan it is necessary to summarize the events that fol-
lowed the conclusion of the truce in 1621. Spain would
have been glad to substitute for the truce a permanent
peace, but held out for terms that were unacceptable
to the Hollanders; and war in a desultory fashion was
renewed. By this time the Thirty Years' War had com-
menced, and the religious and political struggle, that
hitherto had centered in Holland, was being continued
in a distant and larger field. Maurice died in 1625 and
was succeeded in the office of Stadtholder by Frederick
Henry, an able soldier and wise and patriotic statesman,
[45]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

who set himself to consolidate the internal resources of
the republic. The latter showed its recognition of his
services by the fatal expedients of making the office of
Stadtholder hereditary in the house of Orange and of
agreeing to the marriage of Frederick's son William
with the eldest daughter of Charles I. The effects of
this were, on the one hand, to create within the republic
an Orange party that in time intrigued for absolutism
of government, and, on the other, to embroil Holland in
the struggle between the Stuarts and the Parliament of
England, and later, upon the restoration of the mon-
archy in the person of Charles II, to involve the republic
both in diplomacy and in war with that utterly unprin-
cipled person.

Meanwhile peace was finally concluded with Spain in
1648, by the Treaty of Westphalia, or, as the compact is
also styled, the Peace of Miinster, which was proclaimed
on June 5, 1648, the day on which Egmont and Horn
had been executed by Alva eighty years before. By this
time Frederick had been succeeded in the Stadtholder-
ship by his son William, who, with the assistance of the
Orange party, was intriguing for absolute rule. Fortu-
nately for the republic, his death occurred two years
later, a few days before the birth of his son, who even-
tually became Stadtholder and subsequently William III
of England. INIeanwhile, during the prince's minority,
the government was in the hands of Johan de Witt,
whose book "The Interest of Holland" is an able sum-
mary of the political and commercial conditions of the
republic at the time. His patriotism had been whetted
to a personal edge by the fact that he had been im-
1:463

BEGINNING OF THE NEW

prisoned illegally and arbitrarily by the late Stadtholder,
and his opposition to the pretensions of the Orange
party was in consequence unceasing throughout his offi-
cial term, which lasted from 1650 to 1672. It is this that
is commemorated in The Enraged Swan.

The picture represents a swan standing above its nest
of eggs, in a fierce and threatening attitude, prepared to
repel the attack of a dog. Above the latter is an inscrip-
tion in Dutch, signifying "The Enemy of the State,"
while one of the eggs is lettered "Holland," and beneath
the swan are the words "Grand Pensionary," the title
of the office of Johan de Witt. Since the artist, Jan
Asselyn, died in 1652, it is possible that his picture orig-
inally had no allegorical intent, but that its owner, see-
ing its application to the political situation, caused the
inscriptions to be added. However this may be, it re-
mains a curious document of the internal dissensions that
at this period rent the little republic, and ended with the
murder of De Witt and his brother by an Orange mob
in 1672.

Of the entanglements into which the union of the
house of Orange with the Stuarts eventually led the coun-
try, it is enough here to recall that the enmity of Spain
had been replaced by that of France. The ambition of
Louis XIV threatened not only Holland but Europe;
and it was against this that William III during his
Stadtholdership, and later, when he also occupied the
throne of England, directed the military resources of
both countries and his own unrivaled genius as a diplo-
matist. The result was a war, interrupted temporarily
by nominal treaties of peace, but actually protracted be-

n473

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

yond the lifetime of William, until the power of France
had been beaten down by Marlborough, and peace was
secured by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Hobbema,
the last of the great Dutch painters of the seventeenth
century, had died six years before.

Peace removed the barriers that Holland had erected
for her self-preservation. Her artists, like her traders,
wandered afield. The old centripetal tendency, which
compelled the artist to find initiative in his own sur-
roundings at home and so bred a distinctly Holland
school, was superseded by the tendency to look for mo-
tive outside. The painter found it in Italy; he and his
art became Italianate. This is not to say that the Hol-
land painters of the eighteenth century are without
merit. The best undoubtedly have a charm of their own ;
but it is not of the kind that one has learned to recognize
and respect in the earlier pictures, as being a character-
istic product of a nation fighting to maintain the integ-
rity and independence of its nationality. The charm is
by comparison slender and superficial, the product, not
of originality, but of imitation. For the art of Holland
had ceased to be the expression of conviction, and no
longer exemplified the morality that had given character
to its motive and unimpeachable integrity to its tech-
nique.

1:483

CHAPTER IV

FRANS HALS

THE readiest way to study the art of Holland in
the seventeenth century is under the separate
heads of portraiture, landscape, marine, genre,
and still-life. In this way one obtains a comprehensive
survey of the development of each of these branches, and
is not confused by the fact that many of the artists prac-
tised in more than one of them. But at the start it must
be observed that these separate departments are inclosed
in a common motive. As Fromentin says, the art of
Holland was essentially an art of portraiture. It fol-
lowed from the character of the people and the condi-
tions under which they found themselves. They were a
nation of burghers, practical in mind, direct in action,
self-centered, and full of personal and local pride. What
more likely, in fact more inevitable, than that they
should need and their painters should supply an art
which gave a complete, exact, and for the most part un-
embellished portrait of the country, its people, and their
habits of life.

But while this common motive of portraiture, which
distinguishes every branch of Holland painting, was in
response to a common and collective need of the people,
it was modified and shaped by the example of two lead-
ing personalities : Hals and Rembrandt. So determining

[*93

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

was their influence that an analysis of their respective
motives and methods is not only a necessary preliminary
but the quickest way to a comprehension of the develop-
ment of the whole school.

They had characteristics in common. One might al-
most represent the two men by concentric circles; Hals
being the inner, Rembrandt the indefinitely larger one.
Hals was an epitome of the genius of the Dutch race;
Rembrandt was also this, but more— the expression of a
genius peculiarly his o^n. Both manifested, Hals in-
variably, Rembrandt at times, the quality of direct seeing
and doing that was a national characteristic ; but at other
times Rembrandt was possessed of a spirituality, if one
may so call it, that was directly opposed to the prevailing
practicalness. Let us study each for the purpose of dis-
covering what was his own personal art and how it af-
fected the art of others.

Hals, then, the leader of the Haarlem School, we will
examine first, not only because he was the oldest of the
famous men of the seventeenth century, but also because
his own genius was so closely representative of that of his
countrymen. Of his life there is little to record. He
was born in Antwerp, in 1584, but of parents of good
Haarlem stock, temporarily driven from home by the
vicissitudes of the war. He may have begun his studies
in Antwerp, but by 1608 was probably settled in Haar-
lem. It must have been about two years later that he
married a lady named Anneke Hermanszoon, for their
child, Harmen Hals, was baptized on the 2d of Septem-
ber, 1611. The marriage appears to have been unfortu-
nate, a record, dated 1616, showing that the husband was

FRANS HALS

summoned and reprimanded by the magistrates for
drunkenness and violent conduct toward his wife. She
died a few days later, apparently from natural causes,
and the following year Hals married Lysbeth Reyniers,
with whom he lived for fifty years, bringing up a large
family. That his conduct toward the first wife was not
very seriously viewed by the community seems to be
proved by the fact that in 1617 and 1618 he and his
brother Dirck were elected members of the School of
Rhetoric. Later they were elected to the Civic Guard
and to the Painters' Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem.

Like almost all the artists of his time, he was involved
in pecuniar}^ difficulties. In 1652 a baker sued him for
the amount of two hundred guilders, a debt incurred for
bread supplied and for small loans occasionally ad-
vanced. He obtained possession of the artist's movables,
but allowed him to continue in the use of them. Ten
years later we find Hals, now seventy-eight years old,
applying for relief from the city government, which
granted him one hundred and fifty dollars in quarterly
instalments. This exhausted, he renewed his applica-
tion for public assistance, and was granted a yearly pen-
sion of two hundred guilders. Two years later, on or
about the 26th of August, 1666, he died in his eighty-
second year and was buried beneath the choir of the
Church of St. Bavon in Haarlem.

These few circumstances represent practically all that
is known of Frans Hals's life as a man. The main sug-
gestion to be derived from them is that he was held in
considerable esteem by his fellow-townsmen. The paint-
ers enrolled him in their guild; his creditor did not un-

[51]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

duly press him, and the municipahty attended to the
needs of his decHning years. It is fit to dwell on these
points, because a tradition, apparently started by Hou-
braken, the painter-historian of the artists of the period,
has clung about the memory of Hals, representing him
to have been a frequenter of pot-houses and generally
dissolute. But, except for the reprimand administered
to him in the affair of his first wife, there is nothing
on record to prove the accuracy of this tradition. One
is therefore permitted to believe that the incident was
a single offense ; sufficiently reprehensible, but not to
be counted against his whole life. On the other hand,
the leniency of the baker and the relief voted by the
municipality may be fairly taken as arguments against
the story of his worthlessness. But the most reli-
able evidence of its falsity is to be found in his
work as an artist. It is inconceivable that the por-
traits and character studies which he executed in such
numbers could have been produced by a man whose
brain was fuddled with dissipation. The verj^ char-
acter of his technique gives the lie to such a suspicion;
for, as we shall see presently, it was the product of
a particularly vigorous comprehension of facts, and was
rendered in a method extraordinarily direct and sure,
and often under circumstances of great rapidity. While
his work is uneven in quality, it is only toward the end
that there is a falling off in the certainty and the com-
pleteness of his technique. But the pathos that attaches
to the two memorable examfples of this decline, which now
hang in the Haarlem INIuseum, the groups of male and
female Regents of the Hospital for the Poor, is due to

FRANS HALS

their revelation, not of any premature loss of power, but
of the sapping of vitaKty which comes after fourscore
years.

On the other hand, it would be fatal to a just ap])re-
ciation of Hals to try to shape him to our modern no-
tions of propriety. His character was certainly not
staid; it may well have been, by present-day compari-
sons, unregulated. He was a man of his own time, and
the character of his fellow-citizens may be seen in the
groups he has left behind of the officers of the Civic
Guard. They were men of vigorous personality, of
strong passions; they lived high and, maybe, at times a
bit recklessly. They had faced death in battle, and en-
joyed the leisure which their own exertions had helped
to bring about. That they enrolled Hals in their organ-
ization suggests that he was a man after their own heart.
He must have been; otherwise he never could have
painted them as he did, realizing at once their individu-
alities of character and the general character of enthu-
siastic good-fellowship that united them. In none of
these portraits is there any hint of excess, but in all the
declaration of conviviality. It is quite reasonable to
assume that this represents a truer portrait of the artist's
own personal character than the one suggested by Hou-
braken.

JMoreover, there is another phase of his character that
is positively revealed in his work. It is that of humor.
'Whether he is painting one of the curious and sometimes
discreditable characters that haunted the streets and re-
sorts of Haarlem, or the portrait of some burgomaster,
fully alive to his own importance, or recording the puis-

[58]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

sance and the pageantry of the mihtary guilds, it is
always in a genial mood, not seldom with manifest hu-
mor. In fact, if ever there was an artist to whom, as
revealed in his work, the epithet "jolly" were appropri-
ate, it is Frans Hals.

And here we may note a shrewd observation by the
German critic W. Bode. "The artist's particular gift,"
he says, "which we find in nearly every one of his por-
traits, consists in his establishing a lively connection be-
tween the person or persons represented and a supposed
third person." He does not represent the individual or
group as if posing for himself, but as if he had surprised
them in the presence of a third person, or as if he had in
mind the impression that would be produced in a third
person's mind by the scene in front of him. His own point
of view, in fact, is more than objective, more than a recog-
nition of direct, visible facts ; it is rather expansive, draw-
ing into the circumference of its own observation the
points of view and feeling of others than himself. One may
almost say that he has the gift of revealing his person-
ages not only as they appeared to him, but also as they
were regarded by their contemporaries. Whether singly
or in groups, they seem to be perfectly at home in an at-
mosphere at once sympathetic and conducive to the most
spontaneous expression of their own natures. Thus, as
Bode adds, "he has a great gift of rendering any passing
moment of psychical agitation."

Before proceeding to an analysis of his technique, we
may note two other general characteristics: the vigor
and the imagination that it involves. An artist's tech-
nique is a measure of his personality, even though his

154^2

THE JOLLY TOPER

RIJKS MLSKIM, AMSTERDAM

EKANS HALS

\

FRANS HALS

motive be as impersonal as Hals's. The latter's point
of view was objective, intent on seeing and rendering the
facts of things as they confronted him ; but, unhke many
objective painters whose technique presents merely a
correct and efficient record, because their own mind is
little more than a mirror, reflecting mechanically what is
in front of it, Hals's mind was an active vitalizer of the
impressions that it received. The distinction corre-
sponds pretty completely to the difference which may
exist between two lecturers. One will give a careful
presentation of his subject which we listen to with inter-
est, and, if we have confidence in his ability, with a will-
ingness to accept his conclusions; but another will do
more. Because of the gusto with which he attacks his
subject, the genial, expansive outlook with which he views
it, the broadly human spirit in which he treats it, even be-
cause of the tone of voice and gesture of body with which
he lends color and warmth to his remarks, he will so stimu-
late his audience that they cease to be mere listeners.
Their own brains are at work; they become active par-
ticipators in the train of thought. It is in this kind of
way that Hals's technique affects one. * It is the product
of so ample and genial an outlook, so teems with gusto,
and manifests itself with such an assurance of conviction
and so vigorously facile a style, that it stimulates the
imagination. In the presence of his portraits one is no
passive spectator, but aroused to an activity of appre-
ciation.

I have spoken of imagination ; and I mean to imply a
twofold exercise thereof: that Hals himself exhibited
imagination and kindles it also in the spectator. To

:35]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

some people it may seem to be an abuse of the word to
speak of imagination, in the case of an artist so content
to be occupied with the objective traits of his subject as
Hals was. But they overlook the fact that, while an
artist may exercise no imagination in the choice of a
subject, he may display a great deal in the rendering of
it. He may not give reins to his imagination as Rem-
brandt did, peering below the surface of things, explor-
ing the hidden reces'ses of the human soul; he may, on
the contrary, be satisfied* to be an able craftsman, han-
dling the material presented to him, intent only on giv-
ing to it form and character ; yet, even so, he will exhibit
what one may call a technical imagination. And it is
precisely this which characterizes the technique of Hals.
It appears in the arrangement of his compositions, espe-
cially in the group-portraits, where it takes the form of
a superior kind of inventiveness, which is but a phase of
imagination. This gift abounds in the corporation pic-
tures at Haarlem. The problem of disposing so many
figures in such a way that each shall have its due share
of individual emphasis, and yet that the whole group
may have, on the one hand, a naturalness and spontane-
ity of suggestion, and, on the other, a reasonable amount
of artistic unity, was one to try to its utmost capacity
an artist's inventiveness. Hals was the first to solve it ;
and, while other artists profited by his example, none
could attain to the completeness of his success. You
may be thinking of Rembrandt's Syndics of the Cloth
Ghiild; but the latter's composition contains only six
figures, whereas in Hals's masterpiece. The Reunion of
the Officers of the Archers of St. Andrew ^ there are

use]

FRANS HALS

fourteen. For a just comparison you should rather
choose Van der Heist's great composition in the Rijks
jMuseum, The Banquet of the Civic Guard, an amazing
example of inventiveness, but lacking in the suppleness,
spontaneity, and gusto that Hals exhibits.

But the latter's imagination is not alone displayed in
the management of intricate compositions. It is dis-
played also in the treatment of each figure and in his
pictures of single individuals; manifesting itself in two
ways, both in the way he has seen his subject and in the
way he has rendered it. And first for the imaginative
quality of his vision. It is concerned with externals, or
at least with traits of character that lie close to the sur-
face; but with what an alertness it has observed the
idiosyncrasy of each person, and how completely it has
comprehended it! This is more than objective clear-
sightedness; it implies a capacity to reconstruct the
retinal impression, and to clothe it with actual living con-
sciousness, that involves a marked exercise of the creative
faculty of imagination. If you still doubt it, again com-
pare Hals with Van der Heist, next to himself the most
accomplished of the painters of corporation pictures, and
the verdict concerning the latter's work will surely be
that by comparison it is prosy. At least that is the
word that seems to me to express the difference, and it
conveys the suggestion that the work is merely objec-
tive, unvitalized by the imaginative faculty.

Further, observe how Hals treats the costumes and
the accompaniments of still-life in his pictures. He has
not merely seen them; he has felt them, reahzed in his
imagination their distinctive character and their relation

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

to the whole impression. For those were brave days in
Holland, succeeding the expiration of the truce ; an un-
derlying bravery of spirit and an external bravery of
demeanor and manners characterized the life of the
burghers. It was not for nothing that their trade had
absorbed the finest weavers and artificers in the world;
they decked themselves and their families in the costliest
fabrics of their looms and loaded their tables with objects
of fine plate. These things were more to them than van-
ities ; they were the expression of the proud preeminence
they had won. Now it is the spirit and the meaning of
all this that Hals was so skilful in rendering. Van der
Heist's displays of costume rather suggest that "fine
feathers make fine birds," while the suggestion of Hals
is of fine fellows appropriately bedecked with finery.
His imagination, in fact, had caught the enthusiasm of
the time and discovered its interpretation. And, further
still, apart from the relation which this beauty of display
bore to the temper of the times, it needs imagination in
an artist to interpret the beauty of a fabric or an object
of still-life. Mere imitation of its appearance is not suf-
ficient. Such merely represents the appearance; it does
not interpret it. The distinction will be clear to any one
who is a student of photography and has seen the still-
life studies of flowers and fruit and glassware by Baron
A. de ^leyer. In them the crude notion of merely repre-
senting appearances has been superseded by the desire to
make the picture express the enthusiasm which their
beauty has inspired. The result is an interpretation of
the sentiment of beauty. Such, too, is Hals's rendering
of the silks and velvets and lawn ruffs, the dishes and

CSS]

PORTRAIT OF NICOLAES VAN DER MEER
BURGOMASTER OF HAARLEM

HAARLEM MLSKIM

FRANS HALS

FRANS HALS

goblets, the fruit and wine, banners and weapons. He
has not only seen these things, he has felt their beauty;
discovered, in fact, by an act of imagination, the senti-/
ment of beauty they involve.

And here I may add, in the way of anticipation, that,
if a person is dull to the sentiment of beauty that things
inanimate may suggest, he is not going to proceed very
far toward an appreciation of the art of Holland in the
seventeenth century, for it was largely concerned with
the beauty that is inherent in material things. If he is
conscious of nothing more in the rendering of costumes
and accessories with which these pictures abound than
the cleverness of material representation, he will soon
tire of the study, for the skilfulness is so frequently re-
peated, and its very repetition will fatigue. He may
begin by exclaiming: "How wonderfully that sash, this
velvet gown, or what not is painted!" but, unless he can
go on and share the enthusiasm for beauty that inspired
and assured the artist's skill; if, in a word, his own imag-
ination cannot conspire with the imagination of the art-
ist, he will very shortly be an exceedingly tired student
of Holland art.

So far we have discussed the imagination with which
Hals observed his subjects ; it remains to note how imag-
ination M'as involved in the rendering of them. Really
the two processes, the mental and the manual, are inex-
tricably united, for it was the way he felt his subject that
determined the impression he received of it, and the im-
pression itself that suggested the mode of rendering it.
Yes, he was an Impressionist. The term, as we know,
is modern, dating from about 1871, but the idea involved

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

in it has been derived from the example of Frans Hals
and of his great contemporary Velasquez, with whom,
however, so far as is known, he had no possible chance
of conferring. These two original minds, separated by
distance and the difference of race and by the barrier of
hostilities that precluded any acquaintance with each
other or each other's work, were nevertheless kindred
geniuses who simultaneously discovered a new way of
seeing and rendering their subject. It did not survive
•their generation, for the artists of the next century
turned again to Italy, and Hals and Velasquez were
practically forgotten, until in the early sixties of the
nineteenth century Edouard INIanet rediscovered Velas-
quez, and the study of him led to the recognition of Hals,
so that both became an example and inspiration to
modern art. It produced, in fact, a revolution in the
artist's point of view and method of painting, and the
principle involved was dubbed Impressionism.

Some confusion still exists as to what is implied by
this term. JNIany, for example, having heard that Claude
jMonet is an Impressionist and obsen^ing that he
covers his pictures with little dabs of paint, suppose that
in this consists Impressionism. Others of wider observa-
tion, having found themselves puzzled and even out-
raged by the vagaries in paint that are committed under
cover of Impressionism, have concluded that Impres-
sionism is something which, in the words of the late
Lord Dundreary, "No fellah can understand"; no lay-
man, at least ; and, according to their temperament, they
either foam at the mouth with disgust of Impressionism
or regard it as a comparatively harmless form of lunacy.
[60]

FRANS HALS

In either case they miss the fact that Impressionism has
become a vital principle of modern thought, expressing
itself not only in the arts: in painting, sculpture, litera-
ture, play-writing, acting, music, and dancing, but also
in modern methods of education, and, by a natural ex-
tension of the idea involved, even in the modern attitude
toward matters of criminology and sanitation. These,
however, are modern evolutions from the single, simple
principle involved in the Impressionism of Hals and
Velasquez. Before discussing this, let us note what is
surely interesting and extremely suggestive, namely,
that both the rudimentary principle, as it appears in
Hals, and the efflorescence to which it attained in the
nineteenth century were contemporary with a signal
advance in the growth of the scientific spirit. It is, in
fact, of the latter that Impressionism is a phase.

With Hals, as with modern Impressionists, it repre-
sents a more natural way of seeing. When the eye is
directed toward an object, it sees the latter as a whole;
it perceives some details and fails to perceive others; it
automatically selects and eliminates. There is another
way of seeing, as when the object is kept for a long time
under observation, and the eye travels over it at leisure
and exhaustively examines every part. Of a picture
that records the results of this way of seeing, we ex-
claim, "How realistic!" And so in a sense it is; but, on
the other hand, we know that it does not really represent
the way in which we see things in every-day life. What
our eye usually records is not an inventory of details,
but a summarized impression of a personality; and the
more vivid the impression, the less likely is it to be dis-

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

tracted by a number of details. We are impressed by
the general significance of the personality, and note only
those details that most contribute to it; the details that
are themselves most significant and characteristic. Such
was Hals's way of seeing his subject; and, if it resulted
in a very vivid impression in the case of an individual
portrait, how much more when it embraced the compli-
cated impression of a group ! The latter, as a matter of
fact, does include more than any eye could possibly
embrace in a single act of vision ; but this was a necessary
concession to the difficulties of the problem, which was to
effect a compromise between the conflicting claims, on
the one hand, of the group as a whole, and, on the other,
of each of the individual units composing it. Admitting
the need of this reconciliation of opposites, we can
scarcely hesitate to acknowledge the vividness of the
total impression and the no less vivid impression of each
one of its component units.

When we analyze the principle of this method of see-
ing, it is found to be that of relativity. In selecting this
or rejecting that the artist has been guided by its more
or less of value in relation to the whole. The composi-
tion, in fact, is an adjusted balance of varieties of values;
an interlocked scheme of mutual relations ; shrewdly cal-
culated to assert the significance of the whole without
undue impairment of the varying character of the parts.
And this principle, thus applied to the whole composition,
operates also in the treatment of every part. Whether
it be the folds of a sash, the modeling of an arm in a
sleeve, the substance and set of a ruff, or the construction
of a face, each is attained by observing the relation of the
C623

FRANS HALS

values. In this case, however, one uses values, not to
measure the amount of relative importance that they play
in the general scheme, but in the technical sense of the
amount and quality of light reflected from the several
facets of the surface. Hals chose to view his subject in
a diffused light that permitted practically no shadows,
but reduced the whole to a tissue of more light and less
light, of higher and lower values. While this sounds like
the method of the modern plein-air painters, which has
been evolved from the example of Hals and Velasquez,
it is not quite the same ; for Hals does not represent the
light as being independent of the figures and enveloping
them, but still adheres to the old convention of making
the figure itself a center of light, as, for instance, a lamp
is. Thus in one of his groups, where a window appears
at the back, the light beyond it is of lower value than that
which illumines the figures; and, in another case, a
landscape presents a darker background. But, having
adopted this convention, he adheres to the logic of it,
and, like the modern painter who has followed his exam-
ple, but with the difference that he tries to represent the
effect of plein-air^ models his forms in colored light by
the juxtaposition of the various values.

And it is characteristic of Hals that in doing this he
overlooks minute distinctions of value, seizing only the
most salient ones and laying them on the canvas with a
broad brush and a remarkable decision. Thus his tech-
nique presents a bold and vigorous generalization of the
values; often conspicuous for what it omits, as when he
indicates the back of a hat or a ruff by a flat tone that is
almost uninterrupted by contrasting tones. It is a tech-

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

nique, in fact, that relies very largely on suggestion ; hence
its stimulating character, for one's o-vvn imagination is
invited to assist in the illusion.

Nor does this suggestive generahzation involve the
slovenliness or crudeness of brushwork that often dis-
figures the modern impressionistic picture. While a can-
vas by Hals should be viewed from some distance off, it
does not offend at close range. On the contrary, one
can enjoy the orderliness and finesse, the result of fiu-
ency and assurance, that the brushwork reveals, the
ensemble having that quality of perfected craftsmanship
which characterizes the whole Holland School. And,
though Hals is scarcely to be classed as a colorist, the
compositions being decked with color rather than inter-
woven of color, yet his color has a distinctly positive
charm. For he takes so frank a delight in local colors,
whether gravely or gaily sumptuous, preserves their
purity of hue and invests them with luminousness. His
color-schemes, too, have this distinction, that, for all their
bravery of show, they are never commonplace and sel-
dom without a clear suggestion of virility.

A unique opportunity of tracing the development of
his style is presented by the series of corporation pictures
at Haarlem. I will not attempt a detailed description
of each, but rather recall the impressions that were jotted
down in the presence of them. The earliest, then, is The
Banquet of the Officers of the Archers of St. George,
dated 1616, when Hals was thirty-two. How magnifi-
cent the display of still-life, the table-cloth, fruit, dishes,
and goblets painted with such skill and evident delight;
what a vigorous enthusiasm is manifested in the treat-
[64]

FRANS HALS

meiit of the uniforms, mostly black, and the scarfs of
white and crimson silk! Each head is strongly charac-
terized, and so are the hands. The heads are so disposed
that they form a band across the picture, below which
another band contains the more sprinkled arrangement
of the hands. Two of the latter, close together near the
center of the table, form the nucleus from which the lines
of the composition radiate. The composition, in fact, is
quite formal, and the heads, one notices, are lighted from
the side and constructed of shadow as well as light;
meanwliile no light comes in from the window at the
back, through which appears a landscape, less vividly
lighted than the scene indoors. Indeed, the whole ar-
rangement is still influenced by the arbitrary devices of
the studio ; nor does one fail to note that the space occu-
pied by the heads is flattened almost into one plane, as
a modern photographic group is apt to be.

These points are emphasized by a comparison with
Nos. 117 and 118, painted eleven years later. The
Banquet of the Officers of the Archers of St. George,
this time, is presented in an interior without a window
visible. The whole apartment seems to be filled with
lighted air; the heads are no longer so obviously ar-
ranged to secure a contrast of dark against light and
light against dark ; they are evenly illuminated, and take
their places justly in their several planes. For the planes
here extend farther back, and the composition is more
varied, with less suggestion of studied artfulness. More-
over, the treatment of the costumes has become finer, the
blacks especially yielding a varietj^ of delightful grays
that give increased sparkle and animation to the color-
[65]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

scheme. The flesh parts also are more luminous, and
reveal a greater fluency of brushwork, as if the artist had
"got there" with more ease and rapidity. The effect of
all this is very arresting and satisfying until one exam-
ines The Banquet of the Officers of the Archers of St.
Andrew.

The latter belongs to the same year, 1627; but the
artist has surpassed himself. Here the faces literally
scintillate with animation of color. Those of the other
picture are discovered by comparison to be less illumi-
nated ; after all, they have been modeled to some extent
with shadow, and the flesh in parts is inclined to be
greenish gray or drab. The hands also in the latter pic-
ture have more expression and a more individual charac-
terization, while the gestures are more natural and spon-
taneous. The composition, too, is at once more varied
and more coordinated. Again, as in both the previous
pictures, the nucleus of it is a hand; in this case the
center of two diagonal axes. But, while the design is
geometrical, the naturalness of the grouping is quite
extraordinary in its mingling of ease and propriet}^
Further, the color masses are more inventively arranged ;
their spotting is more effectively distributed, and the
gaiety of the color is prolonged into the lower part of the
composition. This picture commemorates the banquet
given by the corps on the eve of its departure to the siege
of Hasselt and INIons. Six years later Hals painted a
Reunion of the same corps, though only one member ap-
pears in both scenes. It is Captain Johan Schatter, who
in the earlier picture is seated in front of the table, facing
left. He occupies the same position in the later group,
[66]

(X *

G 5
< :2

FRANS HALS

but is now standing and looking over his shoulder toward
the spectator. He has exchanged his costume of black
and golden brown, with its scarf of rose and white, for
a snuff -colored jerkin, pearl-gray under-coat, and a sky-
blue sash and feather; and the difference is reflected in
the superior delicacy of color that distinguishes the later
.picture.

In this Reunion of the Officers of the Archers of St.
Andrew the corporation pictures reach their highest
water-mark. The background, however, of brownish-
olive foliage, showing through an opening some red
roofs against the sky, is dry in color and lacking in lumi-
nosity. The heads, in consequence, do not present the
same suggestion of being enveloped in light as those in
the previous picture. In what, then, does the superiority
of this acknowledged masterpiece consist? Comparing
it with the earlier examples, we discover that its color-
scheme of blue and amber, while less resplendent, is more
choice, delicate, and subtle, and that the loveliness of
color has been made contributory to the characterization
of the figures. This is scarcely to be appreciated from
the photographic reproduction, but in presence of the
original one has a lively sense of it. There is no sugges-
tion of the display of color having been considered by
itself or as itself an end; the tonal harmony so accords
with the harmony of expression that characterizes the
separate individualities of the group that tone and ex-
pression are in complete unity. Again, as a result or,
more probably, a cause of this harmony of expression,
there is a complete simplicity of attitude and gesture.
"What shall I do with my hands?" Any one who has

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

stage-managed amateur theatricals knows how fre-
quently this question is asked by the performers. In nine
cases out of ten the best advice, though the hardest to
follow, is to do nothing. It is just the fact that the mem-
bers of this group are so admirably doing nothing which
gives at once such a naturalness and so high a distinction
to this picture.

Here, in fact, we touch perhaps the clue to the whole
superiority of this canvas. In one word, it is control;
that almost unconscious self-control on the artist's part
which results from his consciousness of assured capacity.
He has won beyond the point of experiment, beyond the
later temptation to indulge in display of knowledge and
skill ; he has so absolutely acquired both and attuned the
one to the other, that the tricks and devices of his craft
no longer sway his imagination; he shows, in fact, his
mastery not so much by what he does as by what he with-
holds; he has reached in this great work a plane of ex-
traordinary artistic conscientiousness. The picture, in
fact, has that appearance of inevitableness, that sugges-
tion of having grown rather than of having been made,
which is the highest expression of genius. It represents
Hals at his zenith. The date is 1633 and the artist's age
forty-nine.

The next picture, Officers of the Archers of St.
George, is dated 1639, six years later. It is conspicu-
ously inferior not only to the masterpiece (that were
excusable), but to all the preceding works. It repre-
sents a falling off not so much in actual craftsmanship
as in artistic morality. The artist appears to have been
satisfied to do less well than he could; to do, in fact, as

FRANS HALS

little as he might. He has saved himself expenditure of
invention in the composition by stringing the figures
out in a line across the front, and raising another line of
figures behind them; this having been the niggard, un-
imaginative arrangement of the older corporation pic-
tures, from which his other work had presented so happy
a departure. Correspondingly the heads, while forcible
in characterization, are lacking in luminosity, and the
fabrics are without vivacity. The general effect is
stockish; the breath of life and of art, as Hals could
suggest both, is absent.

Nor in the next picture, dated two years later, the
Regents of the Hospital of St. Elizabeth, do we detect
the true Frans Hals. The faces are trickily modeled,
brilliant high lights being contrasted with heavy green-
ish-drab shadows; and the figures are lumpish, except
the second from the right, which alone reveals sympathy
and enthusiasm.

Of the last two groups nothing need be said but that
they are the work of a veteran of eighty years, whose
hand has lost its cunning, while his brain, no longer ac-
tive, retains only some wavering recollections of its orig-
inal activity.

The important point to be suggested in conclusion is
that Hals's best period included the years from 1625 to
1635; that after the latter period this enthusiasm waned,
and his work became too often perfunctory. In such
cases the flesh parts exhibit an uninspired use of green
lower tones that have a tendency to become drab ; features
are often crudely emphasized by a stroke or dab of ex-
aggerated value, and luminosity has faded into a dull,

n693

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

sometimes lumpish inertness. Even so, however, compared
with the work of other Hollanders, apart from Rem-
brandt, it still had a quality and a character that render
it distinguished ; but much of this distinction disappears
when j'-ou compare him with himself, the later with the
earlier Hals. Many of his portraits suggest the per-
f unctoriness of a man who has got his method down pat,
and tediously repeats it. In a word, his technique was
so personal and so dependent upon the mood of the mo-
ment that it needed the stimulus of enthusiasm, and
when this was absent, the vitality of the technique be-
came impaired.

C70]

CHAPTER V

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

IT is surely no accident that the name of Rembrandt
is familiar to thousands who know little or nothing
of his art. It has, in fact, become so embedded in
the mental consciousness of modern times, that, even as
it must have been a household word in his own day, so
almost it has grown to be in ours. And for this there
seem to be two reasons. In the very use of the word
"household" there is a hint of one: the homely, in the
sense of plain and simple, and very heartfelt appeal that
his conception of the subject-matter generally makes
to the imagination. But there is another reason and a
greater. It is the magnitude of his personality as an
artist. This was but dimly recognized in his own day,
in the succeeding century forgotten, and is only begin-
ning to be fully understood in our own times. The in-
fluence with which he fertilized art was to prove so great,
that it needed a long period of gestation before it came
to birth, and a correspondingly long period of develop-
ment before it reached maturity. Now it has grown to
be recognized and felt, until, like all the great contribu-
tions to human ideas, it is, so to say, in the air. Unwit-
tingly as well as by conviction the world is conscious of
it. Briefly, the nature of the influence is that it has revo-
lutionized our attitude toward beauty. It has not elim-

C7in

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

inated the old idea of beauty, but supplemented it with
a newer one, no less potent and far more adapted to our
modern needs. The absolutism of the classic ideal has
been overthrown by it. Art, that once was solely aristo-
cratic, has been expanded to include the democratic ideal.
It was therefore necessary for the world to have mas-
tered the latter, as a principle of life and conduct, before
it could be capable of appreciating Rembrandt to the
full.

For Rembrandt's art is the antithesis of Greek art.
The Greek is founded upon a hypothesis, upon the as-
sumption of a possible perfection ; Rembrandt's upon an
acceptance of imperfection, upon the facts of life in
relation to things as they exist. The one is based upon
an artificially constructed absolutism, and is technically
expressed through form — form, absolute and supreme.
The other, in its recognition of the relativity of every-
thing in life, is based upon tone, as affected by its envi-
ronment of light. The difference is fundamental both in
its technical and psychological aspect.

As long as society was conditioned by the aristocratic
theory, Greek art, and the Renaissance interpretation of
its principles, sufficed; but, with the growth and spread
of the democratic, a new principle became necessary.
Rembrandt conceived it, and our own age is learning to
apply it. Our appreciation of the character of beauty
has become enlarged by a realization of the beauty of
character. The latter may be associated with beauty of
form and features, though in real life it is more often
not; yet, even when it is, we have discovered that the
beauty of character is due, not to the form itself, but to

1:723

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

the expression inherent in the form, and that character,
as revealed by expression, is discernible also in things
homely, even in the ugly. Art, in fact, has extended its
province until it more nearly corresponds with the uni-
versal scheme of earthly conditions, wherein the good is
mingled with the bad, and the sun shines alike on the
just and the unjust. Meanwhile, even as humanity
gropes toward some divine reconciliation of the coexis-
tence of evil with good, so art must find some means of
spiritualizing the facts of life and of idealizing the homely
and ugly. This preeminently was Rembrandt's gift.

The few known facts of Rembrandt's life are clearly
associated with his art. Born on the 15th of July, 1606,
in Leyden, he was the son of Harmen of the Rhine, a
miller in comfortable circumstances. He was sent to a
Latin school as a preparation for entrance into the Uni-
versity of Leyden, that "when he became of age he might
serve the city and the republic with his knowledge." But
he was destined to serve them in another way. Since he
showed no taste for Latin and a single desire to be an
artist, he was removed from school and placed with the
local painter, Jacob van Swanenburch. He was then
about twelve years old, and after spending three years
with this teacher had made such progress that the father
decided to send him to Amsterdam to study under Pieter
Lastman, whose pictures of religious subjects had made
him the most popular painter of that day.

With this master Rembrandt remained only six
months. Lastman's influence, however, had been con-
siderable, though scarcely in a direct way. In fact, what

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

he did for Rembrandt was to pass on to the latter the in-
fluence which he himself had derived from Elsheimer
during a two years' stay in Rome. For this German
painter had made a great reputation by treating Bib-
lical subjects in the natural or anti-classic manner. The
scene was suggested by the Italian landscape, and the
personages were real men and women, clothed in ordi-
nary costume of the period. It is this translation of the
Bible story into the vernacular of the day, corresponding
as it did to the motive of Lucas van Leyden in his pic-
ture at Leyden of The Last Judgment, which must have
been familiar to Rembrandt, that affected the latter's
imagination.

He returned to Leyden and for seven years in his
father's house continued a course of self-study. It was
based on direct study from life, his models being him-
self and his relations, and included (where again one
may trace the influence of Lucas van Leyden) the prac-
tice of etching. The earliest date recorded of any of
these products of his needle is 1628, which appears on
An Old Woman's Head, Full Face, seen only to the
Chin, and Bust of an Old Woman} In 1624 appeared
another dated etching, Rembrandt, a Bust, and the fol-
lowing year a series of small plates for which he himself
was the model: Rembrandt with an Open Mouth; with
an Air of Grimace; with Haggard Eyes, and Laughing.

These prints give a remarkable clue to a phase of
Rembrandt's personality that has not been sufficiently
emphasized. They show that it included the instinct

1 The topic of this book being painting, Rembrandt's fecundity and genius as
an etcher have not been considered.

[74]

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

and faculty of an actor; the consciousness that in his
body he possessed a muscular instrument capable of ex-
pressing the emotions of the mind; and, moreover, the
capacity to play upon it. This throws a new light upon
the habit, exhibited at intervals throughout his life, of
making portraits of himself and frequently in costume.
The latter particular is apt to be dismissed as a harm-
less pleasantry, whereas it should rather be considered
extraordinarily suggestive. For he was not merely
"dressing up," but enacting a part in his own person;
actually realizing in his body the idea that possessed his
mind. That he could do this and needed to do it for
the satisfaction of his own mental and physical impulses,
helps to explain his extraordinary facility and power as
a draftsman. For the virtue of great drawing consists
in its quality of expression, in its ability to infuse feeling
into a gesture or movement and so correlate the latter to
the mood of mind, presumed to be dominating the sub-
ject. This virtue cannot be gained at second hand from
a model; it must be inherent in the artist himself, and
will be efficient according to the degree in which the
artist can feel the emotion in himself and is capable of
physically expressing it; in a word, to the degree in
which he possesses the instinct of an actor. Viewed in
this light Rembrandt's habit of grimacing before a mir-
ror, dressing up and posturing, gives a most illuminating
clue to the source of his amazing versatility and capacity
of expression as a draftsman.

In the same year, 1630, which produced the small
prints, appeared also two "serious" etchings of himself;
also two Biblical subjects, Jesus Disputing with the
[75]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Doctors and The Presentation with the Angel; and, fur-
ther, several fine portrait studies. In this year he moved
to Amsterdam.

He was twenty-four years old, and, as far as etching
is concerned, "was already in the peculiar situation," I
quote from Hamerton, "of an artist who has left himself
no room for improvement except in attempting art of
another kind, and in overcoming new, though possibly
not greater, difficulties." Among the oil-paintings that
he had already executed are St. Paul (Stuttgart) ; St.
Jerome in a Cave (Berlin) ; two portraits of old men
(Cassel) ; and one of a young man, resembling himself,
at The Hague. It was the fame of his portraits that,
according to Orlers, brought invitations from Amster-
dam to settle there ; and during the first years of his so-
journ over a shop on the Bloemgracht he executed six
that are still in existence. But the most remarkable pic-
ture of this year is the St. Siineon in the Temple, now in
the Gallery of The Hague. Here we detect for the first
time the power and strangeness of Rembrandt's imag-
ination, displayed in the mysteriously lighted expanse of
mammoth architecture and in lustrous fabrics, and, more
essentially, the foretaste of his lifelong effort to con-
struct a composition out of colored light. ^ It is the first
revelation of his peculiarly individual self.

Meanwhile he had been attending the anatomy classes
of the famous Dr. Tulp, and the following year, 1632,
produced the Hague picture, The Lesson in Anatomy,
as remarkable for clearly defined characterization as the

^ Compare the reference on page 103 to the series of Biblical subjects, ex-
ecuted in 1633, which are now in the Munich Gallery.

11^1

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

St. Simeon had been for its imaginative treatment of
light. Both have elements of indecision, for the artist
was only twenty-six, but in them the qualities of Rem-
brandt's personality are already established.

The Lesson brought him fame. Pupils flocked to his
studio, clients sought his pictures, and the ten years that
followed teemed with productivity and fortune. They
cover his life wuth Saskia van Uylenborch, whom he mar-
ried in 1634 and lost by death in 1642. She appears in
frequent portraits and inspired many of his pictures.
He occupied houses successively on the Nieuwe Doel-
straat, Binnen-Amstel, and the Jodenbreedstraat, liv-
ing simply, but indulging profusely in the collection of
works of art. This heyday of prosperity in the com-
panionship of Saskia is commemorated in the superb
portrait of his wife sitting upon his knee, in the Dresden
Gallery.

In 1642 his fortunes received a double blow. Saskia
died, and his corporation picture, The Sortie of the
Frans Banning Cock Company, popularly but errone-
ously called "The Night Watch," was received with dis-
favor. It proved to be a turning-point in his career.
Public recognition began to wane, and financial embar-
rassments to increase; yet his artistic fecundity con-
tinued, marked by more frequent examples of landscape.
Toward the end of the forties he enjoyed the sympathetic
support of the burgomaster, Jan Six, an enthusiastic
lover of books and collector of works of art, whose
friendship lasted till his death in 1658. Meanwhile,
about 1653, Rembrandt seems to have married the wo-
man who had devoted herself to his care, Hendrickje
[77]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Stoffels. She died in 1656 and money troubles crowded
upon him. He was declared a bankrupt; his household
goods were seized by his creditors and later sold at an
appalling sacrifice; the house in the Jodenbreedstraat
also passed under the hammer, and Rembrandt retired
to a house on the Rosengracht. This was in 1658. The
house, which still exists, was a comfortable one; and it
seems probable that the eleven years during which Rem-
brandt lived in it, until his death in 1669, were a time of
tranquillity, as they certainly were of continued artistic
activity. This period, indeed, produced The Six Syndics
of the Cloth Hall (Amsterdam), a masterpiece of as-
sured self-possession and complete achievement. It also
was marked with many portraits of himself, no less than
four having been painted in the last year of his life. One
of them shows him blear eyed, with red and bulbous face,
but laughing, and holding his maulstick like a scepter.^

Eugene Fromentin, skilled alike as a man of letters
and a painter, analyzes in his "Maitres d' Autrefois" the
art of Rembrandt. The argument has been so generally
accepted, that it must be described here. It may be com-
pressed as follows: Fromentin discovers contradictions
in the art of Rembrandt. It is at one time so realistic,
and at another so visionary. He explains this apparent
contradiction by the theory that Rembrandt's was a dual
nature. On the one side he shared with his fellow-artists
their practicalness, direct seeing, and love of clear and
definite expression; while on the other he was a sohtary
dreamer, a visionary, to whom the mystery of things made

^ In the Adolf v. Carstanjen Collection, Berlin Gallery.

! c

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

chief appeal. Thus, by turns he. was reahst and idealist;
occasionally, as in The Sortie, his pictures seem to have
been the battle-ground of his two irreconcilable natures.

Fromentin calls the realist in Rembrandt the "exte-
rior man" as contrasted with the "interior man," re-
vealed in his examples of idealism. The former he char-
acterizes as an accomplished technician, with certainty
of hand and a keenly logical mind. "His aim is to be
comprehensible and veracious; he emulates the true
colors of the daylight; draws with a fidelity and thor-
oughness that, while it makes you forget that it is draw-
ing, itself forgets nothing. It is excellently physiog-
nomical. It expresses and characterizes, in their indi-
viduality, traits, glances, attitudes, and gestures, that is
to say, normal habits of behavior and the furtive acci-
dents of life. His execution has the propriety, the
ampleness, the high bearing, the firm tissue, the force
and conciseness that belong to passed masters in the art
of fine idiomatic expression." The original of this last
phrase is Vart des beaux langues; and we may note, in
passing, its significance in connection with the context.
Indeed, the whole paragraph might as accurately char-
acterize some fine literary production, such as would
satisfy the high standard of the French Academy.
It is based upon the clear comprehension and logic of
form.

On the contrary, when Rembrandt is in the mood of
idealism, Fromentin no longer discovers in him the con-
summate technician. He sacrifices form to chiaroscuro.
And what of his use of chiaroscuro, so peculiar to him-
self that it has come to be called by his name? Fromen-
[79]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

tin, in a beautiful passage, first suggests the general
value of chiaroscuro. Ordinarily used, it is the art of
rendering the atmosphere visible and of painting an
object enveloped in air. "But it is more than any other
medium the form of intimate sensations or ideas. It
is light, vaporous, veiled, discreet; it lends its charm to
things which are concealed, invites curiosity, adds an at-
traction to moral beauties, and gives a grace to the specu-
lation of conscience. In fine, it is concerned with senti-
ment, emotion, the uncertain, the undefined and infinite ;
with dreams and the ideal. And that is why it is appro-
priately the poetic and natural atmosphere, which the
genius of Rembrandt did not cease to inhabit."

It was natural, therefore, that Rembrandt should bring
to perfection this method of chiaroscuro, which Fromen-
tin describes as the art of "enveloping everything, of im-
mersing everything, in a bath of shadow, of plunging
into it even the light itself, in order to draw out the hght
therefrom so that it shall appear more distant, more ra-
diant ; to cause waves of shadow to revolve round lighted
centers ; and to modulate these shadows, to hollow them,
make them dense and j^et render the obscurity trans-
parent, and the less obscure parts easy to penetrate ; in a
word, to give to the strongest colors a kind of permea-
bility which stops them from being black."

But it is Rembrandt's peculiar characteristic that he
carried the method of chiaroscuro much further. Fro-
mentin thus sums the matter up : He calls him a lumin-
arist, apologizing for the word, which, when he -wTote in
1876, was still a "barbarous" one. And a luminarist he
defines to be one who conceives of light as outside of
[80]

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

fixed laws, attaches to it an extraordinary meaning, and
makes great sacrifices for it. And, he adds, "if such is
the meaning of this newlj^ coined word, Rembrandt is at
once defined and judged, for the word expresses an idea
difficult to render, but a true idea, a rare eulogy and a
criticism."

Briefly, then, Fromentin's argument is this: Rem-
brandt in his ideal moods essayed to use light as the
actual material out of which to construct form; he com-
posed in light. The result was admirable, when the char-
acter of the subject justified such treatment; but open
to serious criticism when it did not. The famous instance
of the latter, in Fromentin's judgment, is The Sortie or
"Night Watch."

"Rembrandt had to represent a company of men-at-
arms. It would have been easy enough to tell us what
they were going to do ; but he has told us so negligently,
that people are still unable to comprehend it, even in
Amsterdam. He had to paint some likenesses, they are
doubtful; some characteristic costumes, they are for the
most part apocryphal; a picturesque effect, and this ef-
fect is such that the picture becomes undecipherable.
The subject, the personages and details have disap-
peared in the shadowy phantasmagoria of the palette.
Ordinarily Rembrandt excels in rendering light, he is
marvelous in the art of painting an imaginary subject
{fiction) ; his habit is to think, his master faculty is the
expression of light. But here imagination is out of
place, life is wanting, and the thought atones for nothing.
As for the light, it is unnatural, unquiet, and artificial;
it radiates from the inside to the outside, it dissolves
[81]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

the objects that it illuminates. I see some focal spots
of brilliance, but I see nothing illuminated; the light
is neither beautiful, true, nor reasonable (motivee) ."

Before discussing this judgment let us note Fromen-
tin's approval of Kembrandt's use of light— in the case
of subjects that seem to him to justify it. He instances
particularly The Supper at Emmaus and The Good
Samaritan, both in the Louvre. He speaks with fine
sj^mpathy of the original and infinitely human concep-
tion of Christ in the former picture, while upon the tech-
nique of the latter he comments as follows: "The can-
vas is enveloped in smoke (enfumee), all impregnated
with somber golds, very rich in depth and, above all,
very grave. The material is muddy, yet transparent;
the brushwork heavy, yet subtle; hesitating and reso-
lute ; labored and free ; very unequal, uncertain, vague in
some parts, astonishingly precise in others. No contour
appears, not an accent added in the way of routine.
There is evident an extreme timidity, which is not the
result of ignorance and proceeds, one would say, from
the fear of being banal or from the price which the
thinker attaches to the immediate and direct expression
of life. The objects have a structure that seems to exist
in itself, almost without the help of formulas, rendering,
without any means that you can seize upon, the uncer-
tainties of nature. There are some nude limbs and feet
of irreproachable construction — moreover, 'style.' In
the pale, pinched, groaning visage of the wounded man,
there is nothing save expression, something that comes
from the soul, from within outward; tonelessness
(atonie), suffering; as it were, the sad joy of collecting

1:823

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

one's self when one feels about to die. Not a contortion,
not a trait that overreaches moderation, not a touch in
this rendering of the inexpressible that is not pathetic
and restrained; ever}i:hing dictated by profound emo-
tion and interpreted by means altogether extraordinary."
And, adds Fromentin: "Examine other painters of senti-
ment, of physiognomy and characterization, the men of
sci-upulous observation or of verve. Take account of
their intentions; study their scrutiny, measure their
domain, weigh well their language, and ask yourself, if
anywhere j^ou perceive an equal intimacy in the expres-
sion of a visage, an emotion of this nature, such ingenu-
ity in the manner of feeling ; anything, in a word, which
is as delicate to conceive, as delicate to say, and is
said in terms more original, more exquisite, or more
perfect."

Notliing else, I suppose, has ever been MTitten about
this phase of Rembrandt's art that is at once so fine in
thought and diction, so enlightening, and so memorable.
For one here meets in union the trained thinker and
practised writer and the painter; thus getting much
more than the painter's exclusive point of view, and at
the same time the latter, interpreted by the painter at
first hand. The gist of it is that, when the subject in-
volved an idea, Rembrandt was not only justified in
sacrificing the corporeal to the incorporeal, but was
master of a technique that could express the idea conclu-
sively and with supreme emotional appeal.

In conclusion, Fromentin considers that the whole life
of Rembrandt represents a struggle between the two
sides of his nature. The earhest battle-ground was The
[83]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Sortie, from which, owing to the nature of the problem,
he came off worsted. But did he ever succeed in recon-
cihng the "exterior" and the "interior" man? If ever,
Fromentin concludes, surely in The Syndics, which, in
a word, is a work of imagination and yet of real life.

The whole exposition of Fromentin's argument, from
which these fragments have been gathered, is worth care-
ful study, particularly because of the constructive nature
of the criticism. In its combination of technical in-
formation and logical point of view, in its subtlety and
human sympathy, it affords a model for the method of
approaching the serious examination of a great artist's
w^ork. One may acknowledge its value and the benefit
derived from it, without subscribing entirely to its con-
clusions. It may be possible to feel that it has the defect,
if one is to find a single word for it, of excessive concen-
tration. It centers too exclusively around one picture,
TJie Sortie of the Banning Cock Company.

This picture has suffered from too much exploitation.
It has been praised "not wisely but too well" by artists
and has been worshiped by the public. Fromentin may
have approached it with undue expectations ; at any rate,
he found himself disappointed; and, being at variance
^vith the general judgment, felt the need of justifying
his own attitude. He has done it so exhaustively as to
warp his own judgment, until what there is of weakness
in the picture has become almost an obsession with him.
It is never absent from his thoughts, and continually
peeps in on one page after another, and mingles with the
judgment of other pictures. Fromentin has used it as

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

a pivot around which to swing his whole appreciation of
Rembrandt ; and, more than this, has himself been sucked
into the vortex of his own revolving argument. It is an
expedient scarcely to be warranted by breadth of criti-
cism to select one picture of any artist as a focusing-
point for a consideration of his whole work, and least
of all in the case of an artist so universal as Rembrandt.
INIoreover, Fromentin does not persuade us that he
liad a very wide acquaintance with the master's work.
He knew his Louvre well; grew up with it, and had
become habituated to it and fixed in the impressions he
had derived. Later in life he made the acquaintance of
the National Gallery and visited Dresden. Then he
makes the pilgrimage to Holland. He first reaches The
Hague, where The Lesson in Anatomy fails to satisfy
his expectations. He is alive to its excellence in parts,
but does not find the strength and character of two or
three of the heads sustained throughout the canvas. He
feels that an unreasonable amount of adulation has been
lavished on the picture. It arouses his antagonism and
piques in him the critical vein. Then an interval in his
approach to Rembrandt ensues. He alights at Haar-
lem and notes with what definitive skill and clearness of
comprehension Frans Hals treated the corporation sub-
ject. Fresh from these impressions, he finds himself in
front of Rembrandt's treatment of a corresponding
theme. By contrast it seems to him a work of confused
motives and manifold uncertainties. Yet how extrava-
gantly it has been lauded! Like The Lesson in Anat-
omy, The Sortie of the Banning Cock Company has
been prejudiced by uncritical applause. The critic in
[85]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Fromentin is now thoroughly roused. With every wish
to be fair to Rembrandt, he proceeds to build upon these
two pictures a fabric of constructive and destructive
criticism. His faculties are narrowed to a focus spot of
concentrated heat, are swept into the ardor of their cen-
tripetal momentum, and become caught up in the subtle-
ties of their own compressed invention. He elaborates
a theory, and into its compact limits would squeeze the
genius of Rembrandt.

Further, what kind of mind did Fromentin bring to
bear upon this examination ? A generous one, desirous
of being broad; but a Frenchman's and an Academi-
cian's ; one, that is to say, which clings to logic and bases
its expression upon form. It exhibits and demands
clarity of reasoning; declares itself in refined exactness.
It knew of Impressionism, yet was too old in its convic-
tions, too fixed in earlier traditions, to comprehend it.
But, since the day when Fromentin's mind was in the
forming, the world's point of view toward art, even one
may say toward life, has changed; and its attitude to-
ward the manner of expression has progressed, until it
has come back to Rembrandt with a new and more inti-
mate comprehension. It recognizes him as an Impres-
sionist of sensations and tries to judge him by what we
now know and feel about Impressionism.

Briefly, we have learned that there may be something
in art more valuable than the record of a person, place,
or incident, and this is, the impression of it conceived and
rendered by the artist ; that, through this interpretation,
the place, person, or incident becomes illuminated, more
vitally represented. How, for example, can Barthol-

Csen

POHTKAIT OF ELIZABETH BAS REMBRANDT

RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

I

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

di's Statue of Liberty compare with the interpretation
of the idea evolved by such a man as Lincohi ? The idea
thus logically and formally shaped in the Statue will not
even bear comparison with that which is expressed by
the spontaneous utterance of some poor emigrant, as.he
finds his foot at last planted on the free soil of his imag-
inings. In life, as in art, the real thing to us is what we
feel about it; in Rembrandt's art, what he feels about his
subject and makes lis feel.

Then, again, we have discovered that often we are
made to feel most deeply, not by detailed statement, but
by suggestion : in the case of a speaker, perhaps by a mo-
mentary gesture, or play of features, by a sudden inflec-
tion of the voice, or a pause in speech, and the occasional
accent of a word or sentence; in the case of a ^\Titer,
often as much by what he leaves unsaid, by the thought
that is veiled behind the statement, by the choice and em-
phasis of certain features of his record. Further, we
may have learned to find occasional value even in un-
certainty or indecision. We may sometimes tire of, and
possibly distrust, the world's tendency to "get things
down fine." The latter may seem to imply that the thing
itself is small, or that there is smallness in the vision of
the man who thus approaches life. We may be conscious
of life itself as an aggregate of moments of brilliant
realization and more frequent half-tones, enveloped in
a sea of shadow ; and may reach nearer to the heart and
meaning of it by welcoming its mystery.

Surely something of this sort was Rembrandt's atti-
tude toward life, and therefore his point of view toward-
art. He has been called unlearned, because he had small
[87]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

taste for Latin and no scholastic acquisitions. But in
the wisdom of Hfe, as drawn from hfe itself and dis-
tilled through the brain and temperament of one who
searched life deeply and lived his own life ardently, he
has had few equals, at least among artists. For the ex-
planation of Rembrandt is that to him life presented
itself as an idea.

Thus he is without a rival in the sympathetic render-
ing of old age. He saw more than the exterior of it;
he penetrated into its psychology. For— how shall I
express it? — the fruit of living is experience, and ex-
perience tends more and more to lose sight of the con-
crete in the abstract, to replace the substance of the form
with the higher reality of the idea. The young man, as
he ceases to depend upon the ministrations of the mother,
enshrines her in a personal idea of motherhood; the old
lover rediscovers the bride of his youth in the idea with
which time has enveloped the wife. The idea is the aure-
ole or nimbus that gathers about the form and proclaims
its sanctity. It is the idea, then, that Rembrandt, the
artist of ideas, the searcher after the higher reality inher-
ent in form, discovered in old age.

On the other hand, while Rembrandt exalted the idea
above the substance, he was not indifferent to form. No
great artist whose domain is the world of sight can be.

Indeed, the wider the acquaintance with the master
goes, whether in the galleries throughout Europe, or
through the examples which occasionally emerge from
private collections, as in the recent extraordinary dis-
plaj^ in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the more one is impressed not only with Rembrandt's

cssn

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

feeling for form, but also with his amazing power of
rendering it.

Sometimes, as m the marvelously detailed Portrait of
Elizabeth Bas (Amsterdam), the impression he derived
of the original was one which he could render only by
enforcing the bulk and character and precision of form.
This lady, though not of gentle birth, was, as the widow
of Admiral Swartenhout, a figure in society. This much
we know from the written record ; the rest is recorded in
the portrait. As Rembrandt saw her, she was a woman
of determined personality; a narrow and rigid believer
in her own importance, and a stickler for its recognition ;
an ingrained precisionist, as upright as her backbone and
as set in formalism as her corseted figure. Yet the flesh
of her face and hands has the dimpled softness and deli-
cate contours of well-preserved old age. She is fully
conscious of prerogatives, but her hardness has been
made gracious by the kindly touch of time. All this,
no doubt, was WTitten in detail on her ample person, and
Rembrandt, feeling the intimate value of its complete-
ness, has detailed it in the portrait.

Or take another example of the record of an impres-
sion. The Portrait of Hendrichje Stoffels in the Berlin
Gallery. The devotion of this w^oman had stayed the
artist in his trials, and her exuberant youth had put fresh
force into his courage. He had learned to depend upon
her watchful solicitude, to lean upon her abundant vital-
ity, and to warm his imagination in the glow of her physi-
cal ardor. In the portrait he wraps her strong figure in
the rich grandeur of a mantle that burns with wonderful
brown lights above an under-robe of golden cream, while

CSS]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

a flash of crimson glows in her brown hair, and a golden
warmth is exhaled from the full, firm features and hovers
above the ripe harvest of her bosom. The portrait is an
artist's apotheosis of the glory and the benediction of
physical vitality; and, let us not forget, in the strength
of this woman's companionship Rembrandt achieved his
masterpiece of austere and virile intellectuality — The
Syndics of the Cloth Workers' Guild.

And so we might take one by one the pictures of this
master, and, whether the impression that it records is
drawn mainly from the exterior of its subject or from a
penetration of the character or soul within, whether it
be the expression of the soul of some fact of Bible story,
no matter what the degree of idealism involved, every
time it is form or some interpretation thereof, that is the
foundation of the picture. Not form, however, for its
o^\Ti sake, for the purpose of rendering it in its logical
and reasoned completeness or of exploiting the master's
efficiency in doing what every student aspires, and many
can learn, to do ; but form so felt, so rendered, that what
we are made conscious of is not alone the physical sense
of form, but its abstract significance ; in a word, if I may
say so, the soul of form, as from time to time it is used
to interpret some one or other of the artist's impressions.

You cannot pass from one to the other of the thirty-
seven examples of Rembrandt in the exhibition that, as
I write, is being held in the galleries of the ^letropolitan
Museum, or travel round the galleries of Europe, intent
upon the wealth of Rembrandts that they contain, with-
out reaching a conviction, that grows more and more
assured, of the profound knowledge and feeling for form

1^1

PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS

BERLIN GALLERY

REMBRANDT

I

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

that Rembrandt possessed and communicates. He may
reveal clearly but a portion of a figure, veiling or ob-
scuring the rest ; but what is revealed is sufficient for the
physical appreciation of the whole figure, and enforces
the physical significance, while the spiritual significance
is profoundly increased by the demand that has been
made upon our imagination. After long study one
comes to believe, not only that Rembrandt treated form
differently from other artists, which no one, I suppose,
denies; but also that no other artist has ever treated it
with such a mingling of power and subtlety, with so fine
and sure a reliance upon its physical qualities, and yet
with so marvelous a capacity to interpret its spiritual
significance.

Almost similar in motive is Rembrandt's use of color.
He is not a colorist in the sense that the great Vene-
tians were, for they extolled the glory of local color
— the actual splendor of hue with which they clothed
their radiant figures and wove about them a triumphant
orchestration. This also is an abstract use of color, in-
volving a consciousness and suggestion of the effect that
color as color has upon the imagination. But Rem-
brandt went further. He, too, had the love of beautiful
fabrics, bought them freely, and as freely used them on
his models. But .here he parts company with the Vene-
tians ; for by this time he has ceased to think of the fabric
or its color as something of value in itself. It has become
merged in the impression that he has formed of the whole
subject. It may occupy a large or small part in the total
impression ; that is as it may be ; but henceforth it is only
contributory to the physical and spiritual sensations that

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

he has received and is set upon interpreting. Thus he
is at no pains to preserve the material integrity of the
local color ; he uses it as he does form : extracting from it
this or that, here forcing or there veiling its emphasis,
plunging much of it in shadow. Therefore, even as his
treatment of form has proved an enigma to some critics,
so some hesitate to call him a colorist. After the manner
of the Venetians, I repeat, he is not. But need theirs be
the only manner of the colorist?

Rembrandt used color as he used form, as a sjTnbol of
expression; and, to repeat, what he sought to express
was the impression that the form and color had aroused
in his imagination. When the impression was derived
merely from the externals of form, he would elaborate
in detail the retinal impression and in such cases usually
preserve the integrity of the local color. But it was
otherwise when the impression was extracted from the
soul of the subject, whether the latter were an individual
whose portrait he was painting, or a Biblical incident
the significance of which he was elaborating out of his
own inner consciousness of its meaning. For then he is
not representing things as he sees them, but recreating
the impression that they have made in his imagination.
The local color becomes merged in the color of his imag-
ination ; gathers brilliance from its certainties, fades into
the half-lights of its questionings, is threaded through
and through with strands of discrimination, and plunged
in the mystery of the unknowable.

Finally^ in this use of form and color, Rembrandt is

nearer to what is most modern in the art of to-day than

has been generally recognized. For of late Impression-

1192]

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

ism has entered on a new development. During some
time it was intent upon a more vivid and truthful repre-
sentation of the facts of life. It sat at the feet of Velas-
quez, trying to do again what he did so supremely well.
It did not succeed in equaling his authority, for the suf-
ficient reason that an imitator never rivals the master;
but at the same time it added something to what Velas-
quez stands for. Helped by science, it has carried fur-
ther than he did the study of light in the variety and
quality of its manifestations, and has gained, especially
in landscape, an instrument for interpreting sentiment
and moods of temperament. In the intellectual analysis
of the appearance of nature Velasquez said the last
word ; and now in the domain of emotion and of spiritual
expression, as interpreted by the representation of na-
ture, there is nothing further to be said. In a word, the
ideal of graphic art, as based upon the representation of
nature, which since the thirteenth century has occupied
the artists of the Western world, .is now found to have
reached a development beyond which no further devel-
opment is possible. As a commentary upon this is the
development of photography, which along the line of
representation vies \^ath painting.

Certain original minds,^ therefore, have realized the
need of a new ideal, a new motive with which to refertil-
ize their art. They are seeking to discover it in a new
conception of Impressionism. Their position, in effect,
is this : Need the impression that is derived from nature
be limited by the necessities of naturalistic representa-
tion? Can it not free itself from the liability of being

^ I allude to the men who are working more or less in sympathy with and
along the lines of the French artist, Matisse.

cos:

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

judged by the standard of what it is derived from, and
claim to be enjoyed .for its own abstract quaHties of form
and color? May it not detach itself more freely from the
concrete, and attain nearer to the abstract? Are there
not further possibilities in the conception of form and
color as symbols?

The new movement, for such it has grown to be, in
France, Germany, Austria, and England, has come by
way of the East. The harvest of a century of Eastern
exploration, ripened during the last fifty years by an
increasing intimacy with the art of Egypt, China, Korea,
Japan, India, and Mesopotamia, is at length being
stored. We are beginning to realize the Oriental con-
ception of art as decoration, relying upon the abstract
qualities of form and color, and using them, not as ve-
hicles of natural representation, but as symbols, appeal-
ing freely, without concrete reference, to the imagina-
tion. To repeat, these pioneers of the new movement
find themselves at the point where the Renaissance
started in the thirteenth century. The latter broke away
from the remnant of the Oriental ideal, left in Byzan-
tine art, to conquer a new world of natural representa-
tion, and its evolution has been completed. The new
movement has recovered the Oriental standpoint from
which to attempt the conquest of a new ideal. It is a
movement, at present, mainly of experiment, and nec-
essarily so. For all of us, whether artists or laymen, are
as yet too much under the influence of centuries of in-
herited tradition to be able to free ourselves from the con-
sciousness of what it stands for.

The artist of our own time whose intuition steered him

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RUN

first in the direction of this new conception and use of
form and color is Whistler; and among the potent in-
fluences of his own life was Rembrandt. That the latter
was habitually desirous of evading the concrete signifi-
cance of form is contradicted by innumerable pictures;
but that in some he did evade it, even as Whistler did in
his Nocturnes, is undeniable. Moreover, Rembrandt
showed less regard for the traditional use of form and
color than any artist up to our own day. With all his
sense of its significance, he used it with the complete
freedom of personal expression; and so enveloped it in
the half-lights and obscurities of an atmosphere of his
own invention, that, while the picture represents an in-
cident, it contradicts the idea of material representation.
It is, to a more abstract degree than has been reached
by any other Caucasian artist, the record of a spiritual
impression, based on the symbolic use of form and color.
It approaches the brink of that still further detachment
from the necessities of natural representation that char-
acterizes the New Thought in modern art.

CQS]

CHAPTER VI

THE INFLUENCE OF HALS AND REMBRANDT

BOTH Hals and Rembrandt, each in his different
way, have influenced the art of modern times
much in the same way in which they influenced
their contemporaries. Hals was and still remains a great
exemplar of technical method which may be practically
adopted, while Rembrandt, with a technique that defies
imitation, has influenced his own times and ours by in-
spiring principles not only of technique but of motive.
The difference is inherent in their characters— Hals the
raconteur ; Rembrandt the thinker.

Hals, with his masterful gift of summarizing the inci-
dents and accidents of an occasion or a personality, re-
sembles the best examples of the modern journalist and
magazine writer; keenly alive to the temper of his own
time; reflecting everything vividly, as in a mirror, yet
with a discrimination for effects. Rembrandt, on the
other hand, so absorbed in his own contemplation as to
be an enigma to the man who runs and reads, is yet so
passionately human that the place he by degrees makes
for himself in the imagination and the heart of those who
learn to know him expands and deepens. The differ-
ence between them is epitomized in their respective kinds
of technique. While Rembrandt is a constructor, Hals
is a "follower of surfaces."

11963

THE SUPPKR AT EMMAUS

REMBRANDT

LOUVRR, PARIS

HALS AND REMBRANDT

This may possibly explain the immediate and direct
hold that Hals has exerted upon modern art. The latter
has been mainly concerned with imitation, casting
around for borrowed motives and for an appropriate
method of expressing them. In portraiture especially it
has been confronted with the problem of catering to the
luxurious and extravagant superficialities of a society
largely composed of nouveaux riches. For such the
grave intellectuality of that other example of our day,
Velasquez, was inappropriate, but Hals's glib, effective
following of surfaces, just the thing. It has authority
and style, while its essential commonness of feeling is
discreetly veiled by a veneer of aristocratic suggestion,
and its evasion of the problems of construction is dis-
guised beneath a handsome showing of virility. His, in
fact, was precisely the style that met the demands and
suited the temperament of society in the latter part of
the nineteenth century.

Many, I suppose, will repudiate the notion that Hals
was either commonplace or faulty as a constructor of
form. He is so much a man of our own time, and in
consequence has been so belauded, that to some it may
sound like lese-majeste to dispute his position in modern
estimation. On the other hand, if one tries to get beyond
the barrier of approbation with which artists and the
public have blocked the free view of Hals in relation to
other portrait-painters of his own school, such as Rem-
brandt or Terborch, or of other schools or periods, the
suspicion of his comparative commonness of feeling may
grow into a conviction. Whether it does so or not is so
purely a question of individual point of view and feeling

' COT]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

that it would be futile to try to reason the matter out. I
can scarcely explain my own conviction. Perhaps I have
hinted at the basis of it in applying to Hals the term a
raconteur, and in likening his style to that of a brilliant
newspaper man. It is the function of both of these lat-
ter to make an immediate appeal, not necessarily flashy
but certainly striking, to a mixed gathering of listeners
or readers, whose first and sole demand is that the gist of
the matter shall be hit off attractively. Each in a greater
or less degree is addressing a crowd, and, since the lat-
ter's aggregate of mentality and feeling is of a lower
order than the mentality and taste of some, at least, of
the individuals composing it, the speaker or writer, to
prove attractive, must, consciously or unconsciously,
adjust his thought and expression to this lower level.
Such is the suggestion of Hals and his modern imitators,
when their work is compared with that of the great por-
trait-painters, whose feeling and style are the products
of their own high-bred aloofness and self-sustained in-
dividuality. The work of the former, by comparison,
seems designed to attract, as directly as possible and in
a way to make the least demand upon reflection. It
skims the surfaces and summarizes the most obvious of
their features in the raciest of ways.

On the other hand, it is easier to transmit the convic-
tion that Hals was a follower of surfaces, for one's eye-
sight here assists one's feeling. Look at one of his por-
traits and observe the fluent skill ^^^th which the several
planes of the features are rendered; the finesse with
which a glove is fitted to the hand, the folds of a costume
are expressed, and even protuberances of the form sug-

[983

HALS AND REMBRANDT

gested. It is admirable, marvelous! When painters
can achieve such magic, it is no wonder that we have a
phrase, "as clever as paint." But compare this portrait
with one of Rembrandt's, and the latter's superiority in
the matter of solidity and structural strength becomes
apparent. The suggestion of form in Hals's is altogether
slighter; you will not be convinced of bone and muscle
structure beneath the surfaces, and, if you continue the
comparison from gallery to gallery or choose to vary it
by comparing Hals with Van Eyck, Diirer, Holbein,
and the great portrait-painters of the other schools, will
hardly fail to be convinced of his inferiority as a con-
structor.

On the other hand, it was his skill in following the sur-
face that made his influence so valuable to his contempo-
raries. The sense of structural form cannot be imparted.
It is constitutional ; a man has it or he has not. But it is
possible to teach efficiency in brushwork ; and Hals, one
of the most brilliant painters who ever lived, set a stan-
dard of painter-like craftsmanship that, passed on by his
immediate pupils to others, gave to Holland the merit
of producing the most efficient school of painters in the
world. The most important of his pupils were Terborch,
]Metsu, Wouwerman, and Adriaen van Ostade, the last
named the teacher of Jan Steen. It is a noticeable fact
that all these men were genre painters, for even Wou-
werman, by a slight straining of the word, can be in-
cluded, since the individual charm of his landscapes con-
sists in their animated groups of figures, and it was in
his treatment of these that he was especially indebted to
Hals. In fact, the latter's influence on the men of his

1:993

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

own day was directly and most characteristically and
emphatically shown, not, as in our daj^ in portraiture,
but in genre; in shaping, refining, and giving new dis-
tinction to the tendency for genre pictures that the Hol-
landers had inherited from the united School of Flan-
ders.

In a previous chapter we have spoken of the encour-
agement which Hals's example gave to the still-Mfe
painting ; it was no less effective in encouraging the use
of still-life in genre. The motive of the new genre be-
came less that of depicting an incident than of picturing
the environment of home life, its accompaniments of fur-
niture and belongings; and these were made contribu-
tory to recreatmg the spirit of the life.

Immediately from this proceeds the second point which
the genre painters gained from Hals: namely, an in-
spiration for the composition of their pictures. It is
marked no less by naturalness than propriety, and by an
extraordinary feeling of unity. There is an excellent
discretion alike in the choice and in the arrangement of
details ; ever}i;hing is characteristic and made subservient
to the general harmony.

The latter results from the third point enforced by
Hals's example : the principle of relativity in the use of
values. Color became the basis of the new genre, and
color treated from the point of view of tone ; hence again
the incomparable unity of impression which examples of
the best genre artists exhibit. Some mass of local color,
either cool or warm in hue, affords a dominant note.
To this, by means of contrasts and repetitions, the whole
scheme is tuned. The contrasting values of other local
[100]

HALS AND REMBRANDT

colors are opposed to that of the dominant mass, and
higher and lower values of all these colors repeated
throughout the scheme. The harmony that ensues may
be rich and low or high in key and sprightly, but in the
finest examples, and they are very numerous, is always
characterized by a choice refinement.

This quality is due in no slight measure to the fourth
way in which these artists were indebted to Hals, namely,
their skill in brushwork. For they learned from him to
lay the color on frankly and directly, without fumbling
or indecision. They constructed their forms in color,
building them up with layers of modulated values, work-
ing generally with a small brush, but one that was fully
charged with pigment which was floated on to the sur-
face. Thus the color has not only body and substance,
but also a limpid transparency, a quality as of liquidized
gems. It is this blend of lightness of touch, of purity of
pigment, and withal of solid underpainting, that gives
breadth and dignity to the delicacy of these harmonies.
To assure one's self of this it is but necessary to compare
a Vermeer or Terborch with a Netscher. The last is felt
at once to have less breadth and dignity, and altogether
slighter charm; and an examination of his technique
helps to explain the reason. There is less underpainting,
and in the minute and dainty passages the pigment has
not been floated but stippled over the" surface. The
result is a comparative tightness of feeling and, in place
of limpid transparency, a suggestion rather of thinness
and hardness.

The influence exerted by Hals in these four directions
—namely, in the treatment of still-life, in composition,

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

in regard for values, and in the habit of skilful brush-
work— was supplemented by that of Rembrandt, which
dates from 1632, the year in which he moved to Amster-
dam. The latter also affected the development of genre,
but not in the line of direct suggestion. Rembrandt's
technique in its most characteristic aspects was and still
remains too personal an expression of his o\\ti attitude
of mind and of its changes of mood, varjdng according
to the nature of each subject interpreted, to permit of
imitation. Rembrandt contributed ideas. He enlarged
the scope of genre by the suggestion, on the one hand,
of a further range of subject, and, on the other, of a new
motive in technique. It was especially the example of
his religious pictures that affected the idea of subject,
either directly leading other artists to a similar treatment
of religious themes or indirectly encouraging them to
include some kind of sentiment in the domestic scenes
they depicted. JMeanwhile, by the example of his own
use of chiaroscuro, he encouraged a more subtle study of
values, at once more intimate and varied and more ex-
pressive.

An admirable epitome of the character of Rem-
brandt's influence upon his contemporaries is in the old
Pinakothek in INIunich. In the first place there is a
Holy Family, painted in 1631, the year before he moved
from Leyden. It is about six feet high, the figures being
life-size; but the conception and treatment of the sub-
ject are thoroughly in the way of genre. The picture
presents a glimpse of the interior of a Dutch home : the
tools hanging on the walls, the face, figure, and costume
of the mother, the Child swathed in a shawl, and the fa-
ll 102]

HALS AND REMBRANDT

miliar accompaniment of the cradle— all are distinctively
Dutch in character. The mother, with a pretty gestm-e
of tenderness, is fondling one of the Baby's feet, looking
do\Mi at it with a gentle smile, while the father bends
forward over the cradle in an attitude of reverent solici-
tude. The whole scene breathes the quiet happiness of
domestic life. In its character the picture is essentially
a genre subject. At the time it was painted Dou was
working in Rembrandt's studio, and to its influence it is
not unreasonable to trace at least some of the tendency
that Dou exhibited in later years to introduce just such
tender and reverential sentiment .into his own work, as
witness The Young 31 other at the Hague Gallery -and
The Old Woman Saying Grace in the Pinakothek in
Munich. In fact, The Holy Family is already charac-
teristic of the sentiment that became infused into genre
by the example of Rembrandt.

Intimately connected with this is the example of Rem-
brandt's technical use of chiaroscuro, used either for the
purpose of interpreting sentiment or of simply adding
to the interest of the color-scheme. The foretaste of this
is given in a series of six pictures of Biblical subjects in
the Pinakothek, painted for the Stadtholder, Frederick
Henry: two of them. The Descent from the Cross and
The Elevation of the Cross, in 1633; The Ascension,
1636; The Burial and The Resurrection, 1639; and The
Adoration of the Shepherds, 1646. About three feet
high, thej^ approximate to the familiar size of genre, and
are distinctly genre in conception and treatment. More-
over, they are arched over at the top, a device that be-
came popular with Dou and other genre painters, who

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

frequently substituted for the formal arch a draped cur-
tain, the result being to set the main part of the scene
back, and thus increase the effect of looking into it.
This, however, is not merely to suggest more vividly the
third dimension. For Rembrandt in these pictures has
set the example of concentrating the high light on a few
features of the composition, surrounding these with
lighted objects of lower value, and finally inclosing all
in a ring of shadow, so that one seems to be looking into
a circular concavity out of the gloom of which certain
•objects emerge into view with greater or less distinct-
ness. The device is used by Rembrandt to heighten the
dramatic and emotional significance of the composition,
and was so applied by some of his followers, notably by
Maes, while by others the principle was adopted as a
means of giving force, variety, and added charm of mys-
tery to their color-schemes. It became, in fact, one of
the most characteristic of the technical methods of Hol-
land genre.

Apropos of this series it is interesting to note, as a
side-light on Rembrandt's use of models, that one. The
Elevation of the Cross, contains a striking figure of an
Oriental. It was transferred in reduced size from a pic-
ture of the same subject painted in the preceding year,
1632, which is now owned by the New York collector
Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt. JNIoreover, the head and bust
of this man appear as the subject of another picture,
painted in the same year as The Elevation, which now
hangs in the INIunich Pinakothek.

To recapitulate, then, in this series of the Old Pina-
kothek we have a striking example of Rembrandt's mo-

HALS AND REMBRANDT

tive in the treatment of Biblical subjects, developed
during the period from 1633 to 1646 of his greatest popu-
larity in Amsterdam. It involved, as we have seen, the
translation of the heroic and grandiloquent style of re-
ligious subjects, as practised by the Italians, into the
homelier poignancy and intimate personal suggestive-
ness of meaning that commended themselves to the sim-
ple directness and home-love of the Hollanders. It
practically converted the religious picture into one of
genre ; and its example led to a similar treatment of these
subjects by other painters, notably Carel Fabritius,
Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, and Gerbrandt van den
Eeckhout, while to the painters of domestic genre pure
and simple it also supplied the motive of sentiment and
a new motive of technique.

It is true that sentiment plays a comparatively small
part in Holland genre. Dou has been mentioned as fol-
lowing the example of Rembrandt in this respect, and
the other prominent instance is Nicolaes IVIaes, who en-
tered the master's studio in 1648, that is to say, two years
after the completion of The Adoration of the Shepherds,
the latest of the Munich series. How far Rembrandt
had influenced the bias of Maes's temperament toward
sentiment is conjectural, but that he supplied the
younger man with a technical principle for its expression
is certain. jNIaes discovered the possibilities of emotional
suggestion that existed in the device of heightening the
luster of certain parts of the composition by the contrast
of veiled and shadowed color elsewhere. With him it
does not reach the dramatic force or depth of emotional
appeal that the master's use of it involves, but neverthe-

Clos]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

less becomes the expression of a sentiment that, as Bode
remarks, is nearer to the sentiment of Rembrandt than
that of any other artist of the school.

On the other hand, by those genre artists of the period
who were not given to sentiment, the principle of Rem-
brandt's chiaroscuro was adopted for the sake of aesthetic
considerations, founded upon the facts of sight. It may
or may not be true that Rembrandt, himself derived it
from his observation of the light in the dim recesses of
his father's mill, but at any rate the artists of genre in-
teriors soon saw its application to their subjects, and
were led by it to study with more discrimination the in-
finite variety of light value. The result was twofold.
Their color-schemes grow more subtle and refined, and
the tonality becomes impregnated with the suggestion
of atmosphere. Thus the example of Rembrandt's
chiaroscuro wedded to that of Hals's facile craftsman-
ship developed the inimitable perfection of technique
which characterizes the best works of Holland genre.

It is the latter, one may observe in conclusion, that has
most affected the modern revival of painting in Holland.
While foreign painters, in portraiture especially, have
been disposed to follow the direct example of Frans
Hals, the Hollanders themselves, both in landscape and
genre, have been influenced by the so-called "little mas-
ters," and, in the case of Josef Israels, by Rembrandt
himself. And the result of this influence has been to
make modern Dutch painters, as a group, the best brush-
men of their age.

Cioe]

CHAPTER VII

DUTCH GENRE

THE tendency toward genre painting began be-
fore the separation of the Holland Free State
from the Spanish Netherlands. Pieter Brvieghel
the Elder, who died in Brussels in 1570, is regarded as
the leader of the group of painters who depicted the life
of the people, particular^ in open-air surroundings.
His work, for example, and that of one of his pupils,
Lucas van Valckenborch, make a very lively showing in
one of the galleries of the Art-History Museum in
Vienna. Here, in a number of canvases of considerable
size, crowded with figures, are pictured scenes of peas-
ants, merrymaking, harvesting, engaged in a vintage
festival, or skating and sleighing, while there is even a
representation of rich folk enjoying a picnic in a park.
These painters and their contemporaries in similar sub-
jects are to be reckoned in the Flemish School. But
there is one, Pieter Aertz, surnamed "Long Pieter,"
who, although he died in 1575, before any separation
from Flanders was dreamed of, may be considered as a
forerunner of distinctly Dutch genre, since he was bom
in Amsterdam and lived there for the greater part of his
life. An interesting example of his work. The Egg
Dance J is in the Rijks Museum. The scene is a kitchen,
DOT]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

opening into a garden, and the floor is scattered with
various articles — a bowl, a shoe, onions and eggs — among
which a young man is jauntily dancing, while a group
beside the hearth applauds. As far as the character and
spirit of the scene go, the picture is thoroughly represen-
tative of the older kind of genre, which portrays the type
rather than the individual, and nimierous little episodes
massed into a group, rather than a single incident or
phase of life wrought out completely. For this becomes
the tendency of the later and distinctively Holland
genre, which, as the technical motives of the artists grew
in refinement and possibly as the taste of the public be-
came more refined, resulted in the subjects being drawn
more and more from the home life of the well-to-do and
fashionable. By this time the genre pictures have ceased
to represent an amusing picture-book of manners and
customs; they have in a sense lost their interest of sub-
ject, the matter of which they treat counting for very
little in comparison with the charming manner of the
treatment.

The three greatest masters of Holland genre, Ver-
meer, Terborch, and Jan Steen, must be considered sepa-
rately. ISIeanwhile we will summarize the method and
manner of some of the most important among the able
but lesser artists.

ADKIAEN VAN OSTADE

Van Ostade, M^ho was a pupil of Hals and later became
influenced by Rembrandt, stands midway between the
earlier and the later motives of genre. His favorite and,

DUTCH GENRE

on the whole, most characteristic subjects are groups of
peasants revehng or squabbling in the kitchens or arou\id
the doors of inns. The figures are squat and lumpish,
curiously like animated roly-poly puddings, only re-
deemed from commonness by the limpid coloring and
the suave, facile manner of the brushwork that he had
derived from Hals. Sometimes, however, he selects a
few figures and gives them an individual characteriza-
tion. In fact, the latter pictures, as well as his groups
of peasants, show a remarkable affinity to Brouwer's
treatment of similar subjects. For this eccentric and
original artist, an "Adonis in rags," as he has been
called, a refined painter of coarse themes, though Flem-
ish by birth, seems to have come under the influence of
Frans Hals, lived in Haarlem and Amsterdam, and was
really in his art representative of the Holland School of
genre. Van Ostade, therefore, must have known him
and may well have been affected by his example. At any
rate, the character and spirit of his earlier pictures corre-
spond with those of Brouwer's, though the latter's work
exhibits a more refined artistic sense. In time, however,
Van Ostade came under the Rembrandtesque manner;
the thinness of his painting develops into a richer im-
pasto, the feeling of the composition becomes larger, the
choice of subject more distinguished, and his treatment
more studied and sympathetic, while the tone is warmer
and more luminous in consequence of the shrewder use
of chiaroscuro. Later his manner again changes to one
of extreme refinement, almost finical. The surface, to
use an expressive French word, leche, seems licked into
glossiness; the tone has become cold and grayish; the

D09:

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

compositions are more studied but less picturesque; yet
the colors have an extraordinary transparency. The
whole canvas has less the air of intimate observation than
of something wrought over in the studio.

These three phases of Van Ostade's development can
be studied side by side in the examples of his work in
the Gallery of The Hague. Representative of his first
manner is Peasants' Holiday, painted in 163- (the last
figure is undecipherable) ; of the second, Marriage Pro-
posal, which belongs to the period between 1650 and
1655; and of the third manner, Peasants in an Inn and
The Fiddler, painted respectively in 1662 and 1673.

Van Ostade died in Haarlem in 1685. Among his pu-
pils were his brother Isaac van Ostade (1621-1649) , Cor-
nelis Bega (1620-1664), and Cornelis Dusart (1660-
1704) . The last named inherited a great number of his
master's studies and sketches, which he worked upon and
finished. These after Dusart's death were sold as his
own, a fact which helps to explain the similarity of his
style to that of Adriaen van Ostade. Bega often imitated
the latter's choice of subject, and also with some success
his manner of gray tonality, but his colors lack transpar-
ency, and the flesh parts are dry and brickish. The out-
door scenes of Isaac van Ostade, alive with figures in
characteristic action, are exceedingly interesting as pic-
tures of the "passing show" of Dutch life. Lastly, it is
to the credit of Adriaen van Ostade that he was the
teacher of, or at least exercised considerable influence
over, Jan Steen during the latter's sojourn in Haarlem.
But the manner of his own pictures is that of the earlier
genre which preceded the great School of Holland.

Clio]

DUTCH GENRE

GERARD (gERRIT) DOU

This artist, born in Leyden, 1613, and dying there in
1675, spent his whole hfe in his native city, helped to
found its Guild of St. Luke, and influenced several
other genre painters. Among the latter were Gabriel
Metsu, Godf ried Schalcken, Pieter Cornelisz van Slinge-
land, and Frans van Mieris the Elder, who handed on
the tradition of the Leyden School to his son, Willem van
^Mieris. Dou himself had enjoyed the influence of Rem-
brandt, in whose studio he worked during the three years
preceding the master's move to Amsterdam in 1631.
But before this time he had been instructed by his father,
who was a painter on glass, and by Bartholomeus Do-
lando, an engraver. Don's own matured style very re-
markably reflects both the earlier and the later experi-
ences of his training. While he learned to feel his subject
in the manner of Rembrandt, he contrived also to see it
with a precise eye for detail and to render it with the
nicety of a painter on glass or of one who uses the burin.
He was an impeccable draftsman and a good composer,
so long as the subject contained only a few figures and
was treated in a small size. For large canvases and the
handling of a complicated composition his style was al-
together too minute in character. On the other hand, his
color is always harmonious, though in some works in-
clined to an excessive polish; and the chiaroscuro, skil-
fully applied, is, when the subject permits, very charm-
ingly expressive of the sentiment. He devoted himself
to the representation of interiors and, as we have seen,

cm:

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

adopted the device of showing them through an arch or
beyond a lambrequin, formed of a heavily draped cur-
tain, frequently also representing one or more figures at
a window with the obscurity of the room behind them.
In thus adapting Rembrandt's principle of chiaroscuro
to the rendering of the physical phenomenon of a con-
cave space more or less immersed in shadow, no one was
more skilful than Dou. To give depth and quality to
the obscurity of the distance and especially of the ceiling,
he would hang a chandelier or lantern in the middle dis-
tance and catch the light upon it. Similarly, he would
place some objects in the foreground to bring the latter
forward, and then between these two foci of secondary
light concentrate or scatter the main group of figures in
highest illumination.

The two finest examples of his skill in thus building
up a composition of values of light are The Young
Mother, in the gallery of The Hague, and The Dropsical
Woman of the Louvre. The former, because of its
charming sentiment, is Don's most popular picture ; but
the other, in consequence of the superior simplicity and
concentration of its composition, the comparative breadth
of its treatment and fuller richness of color and quality
of chiaroscuro, is without much doubt his masterpiece.
However, another example which approaches it very
closely is A Lady at her Toilet, in the Munich Gallery.
Don's interest in chiaroscuro led him to experiment with
so-called night-pieces, where the gloom of the interior
is illuminated by a candle that makes a central spot of
brilliance, fitfully reflected in a partially diffused glow.
Such are An Old Woman who has Lost her Thread and

[112;]

DUTCH GENRE

the Young Man and Girl in a Cellar, both in the Dres-
den Gallery ; while the most elaborate and famous exam-
ple is TJie Night School of the Rijks Museum, somewhat
damaged by time, in which there are five separate points
of varying degrees of illumination.

In a picture in the Dresden Gallery Dou has repre-
sented himself at work in his studio, a bare and homely
room, lighted by a large window on the left. This win-
dow, with slight differences of shape and size, appears
in many of his works, occupying a similar position;
while, even when it is not shown, its effect is noticeable
in the artist's tendency to light his compositions from
the left. Another instance of his tendency to repetition
of motive may be traced in the frequency with which he
used over and over again the same piece of furniture or
object of furnishing. For example, in a still-life (No.
1708) in the Dresden Gallery appears the same candle-
stick that is introduced in a number of other pictures.
The point is interesting as showing the way in which
Dou artificially arranged his subject-matter; and he was
followed in this respect as in others by all the genre
painters. Each had his particular motive of composi-
tion and freely repeated it ; his particular bit of costume
or article of furnishing that with variations of arrange-
ment he used repeatedly. Holland genre, in fact, ceased
almost from its beginning to be a direct representation
of actual domestic life. It was based upon the latter,
but the artist reserved a complete liberty of selection
and arrangement. He was not intent upon illustrating
the life, and only borrowed hints from it to assist him in
creating a picture of his own invention. It is a point to

8 [HSU

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

be observed by the modern public, which is apt to resent,
as shallow in motive and uninteresting in subject, a pic-
ture which has been designed mainly or solely as a pic-
ture; that is to say, for the beauty of form, color, light,
and tone that may be expressed in a composition of ob-
jects, arbitrarily brought together for this purpose.
Such an attitude on the part of an artist is, however,
thoroughly justified by the example of the Holland
School of genre, which it is the fashion to-day to admire
so generously.

NICOLAES MAES

Some may criticize this placing of Maes among the lesser
artists of genre. Bode ranks him with Vermeer and
Pieter de Hooch among the "great genre painters of
Holland," and adds that "there is scarcely any pupil of
Rembrandt's who approaches the great master so nearly
as Maes does in this series of pictures." He is alluding
to Dreaming, or, as it is sometimes called, A Reverie, a
young girl gazing out of a window, and to Asking a Bless-
ing, in the Rijks Museum; to The Young Card-Play ers,
in the National Gallery, and to Nurse and Children
with Goat-Carriage, in a private collection; and also to
certain pictures of old women, such as the one o\Mied by
Mr. John G. Johnson of Philadelphia, that was recently
seen in the Exhibition of Dutch Art in the ^letropolitan
Museum. In all of these pictures the figures are life-
size, and, to quote Bode, "one weakness is common to
all of them : that they present simple motives on a large
canvas with rough execution and without the powerful
1:114;]

OLD WOMAN SPINNING

RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

NICOLAES MAES

i id

I

DUTCH GENRE

and individual language with which Rembrandt renders
similar genre pieces."

The truth of this criticism seems to be sufficient of
itself to exclude Maes from the ranks of the great genre
painters, whose works are great of their kind just be-
cause these painters so admirably fitted the size of their
pictures to the scope of their intention and their powers,
and wrought their canvases to the highest pitch of a
personally inspired technical perfection. This became
the ideal of Holland genre and remains its chief distinc-
tion ; and Maes only attains to it in his smaller canvases,
such as the two examples of An Old Woinan Spinning,
in the Rijks Museum, and An Old Woman Peeling
Apples (the spinning-wheel near her), in the Berlin
Gallery, and The Cradle and The Dutch Housewife of
the National Gallery. The period of these small genre
pictures, beginning about 1655 and lasting for ten years,
represents the high-water mark of Maes's artistic career.

In his earlier period he shows a preference for red,
juxtaposed with black and less frequently with yellow,
that continues to characterize his work. But at first, as
in The Dreamer, it is the brightness of hue that seems to
attract him. He has bathed the red shutter and the girl's
figure and the leaves and fruit of the apricot-tree, that
grows beside the window from which she leans, in a warm
sunlight, and the latter, blended with soft shadows, glows
upon her face and hands. All the several textures are
rendered with admirable veracity, and a resemblance to
life, that would be startling but for the quiet, pensive ex-
pression of the girl's figure that pervades the canvas. The
picture attracts and charms, but does it hold one's inter-
[115]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

est? Scarcely, if you come back to it after seeing the
more imaginative treatment of chiaroscuro in the Card-
Play ers of the National Gallery; and still less, if you
compare it with one of Maes's smaller genre pictures in
the Rijks JNIuseum; for example, An Old Woman Spin-
ning (No. 1504). Here the red reappears in the table-
cloth, and the black spot is made by her head against
the drabbish white of the wall, but the yellow is disguised
in her olive-green dress, which shows the whitish-gray
sleeves of the undergarment. It is a cooler scheme of
color, more restrained yet richer, and it is lighted with-
out any striking contrasts of chiaroscuro. Instead, the
humble apartment is permeated with a dimly luminous
atmosphere, out of which certain parts of the composi-
tion emerge into clearness, while the rest is veiled in half-
tones and shadow. The picture is extraordinarily real,
exquisite in technique, and deeply moving in its sugges-
tion of the half-lights of existence among the aged and
the poor. The secret is, that what was experiment or as-
sertion in the larger canvas has here become the free ex-
pression of the artist's simple and sincere sentiment.
Sentiment and expression are united in a natural and
complete equipoise.

During the last twenty-five years of his life Maes
seems to have gained a rather scanty subsistence by
painting portraits. Some of these are of high merit ; the
Portrait of a Man, for example, in the Fine Arts Mu-
seum at Budapest, which represents a gray-haired and
bearded man, with black velvet cap and black coat edged
with brown fur, sitting in a red-backed chair. Thus it
repeats the artist's favorite color-scheme, and moreover,

OLD WOMAN IX MEDITATION GABRIEL METSU

RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

DUTCH GENRE

in its grave, tender rendering of old age, preserves the
fine sentiment of his best period. But such noble charac-
terization of humanity is rare with him, for, impelled by-
need and very likely, by the taste of his public, he became
an imitator of Van Dyck's elegance. With INIaes this
elegance became pinchbeck, his fine ladies and gentle-
men being very cheap imitations of their models.

GABRIEL METSU

Born in Leyden in 1630, the son of a painter, Gabriel
jNIetsu was one of the precocious talents of the Holland
School, for in his sixteenth year he helped to form the
Guild of St. Luke in his native city. For the purpose of
studying his art, his brief career of thirty-seven years
(he died in 1667) may be conveniently divided into two
parts, preceding or following the year 1655, in which he
moved to Amsterdam and came under the direct influ-
ence of Rembrandt. But it would appear from his own
early pictures, that even during his life in Leyden he
had by some means obtained a knowledge of this mas-
ter's work. Metsu's actual teacher, according to Hou-
braken, had been Dou, though his own work shows no
direct trace of the latter's influence. On the other hand,
that of Hals is apparent. Meanwhile he experimented
for himself and produced several pictures v/hich, like
The Blacksmith, in the Rijks Museum, are founded on
the motive of a workshop, lighted fitfully by a forge and
scattered with tools. In fact, as Bode says, the work
of his early period is distinguished by "restless composi-
tion, hurried movement, and careless treatment."
D17]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Moving to Amsterdam, he became one of the group
that circled round Rembrandt, and at first was directly-
influenced by Maes, and perhaps by Rembrandt himself;
witness his Old Woman in Meditation of the Rijks Mu-
seum and his fine portrait of an old lady in the Berlin
Gallery. Then almost at a jump he reaches an indi-
vidual style of his own. It grows out of his attitude
toward the subjects that— with occasional exceptions of
marketing scenes, such as the two pictures respectively
of a man and of a woman selling poultry, in the Dresden
Gallery, and the Vegetable Market of the Louvre— he
now favors. They are intimate presentations of the gra-
ciously prosperous life of the middle-class burghers, be-
fore extravagance and ostentation had eaten their way
into Dutch society. That his art thus settled to a distinct
purpose may be partly attributed to the fact that the art-
ist himself settled down to domestic life, marrying Isabella
Wolff, April 1, 1663. A picture in the Dresden Gallery,
dated two years earlier, Lovers at Breakfast, shows him-
self and the lady sitting side by side, one of his arms
about her shoulders and the other lifted as he holds a tall
wine-glass. It is curiously interesting in its resemblance
and difference to Rembrandt's picture of himself and
Saskia that hangs in an adjoining gallery of the same
museum.

The style which ^letsu formed for himself is in accord-
ance with the character and treatment of the subjects to
which he now devoted himself. He abandons the Rem-
brandtesque principle of chiaroscuro, for there is no
mystery or depth of sentiment in his point of view. He
is frankly and simply interested in the genial externals

\

DUTCH GENRE

of his subject; yet something of the JNIaes influence still
affects his outlook. He sees the comfort and happiness
of the home life and reflects it in the composure and re-
fined orderliness that now pervade his compositions. De-
voting himself to the simplest and directest way of pre-
senting the subject, he avoids all striving after effect and
secures a quietly balanced ensemble, wherein every fig-
ure and object is rendered with sureness of drawing,
regard for the beauty of local color, and the utmost per-
fection of truthful realization. The date at which Metsu
thus found himself is placed about 1660, and the picture
in the JNIetropolitan INIuseum, A Music Party, dated
1659, serves to mark the transition. Its composition is
still inclined to be "restless" ; but the treatment, far from
being "careless," is distinguished by a very sincere feel-
ing for the objective beauty of the salient details, while
at least one figure, that of the cavalier on the right, ex-
hibits the concentrated repose of movement which be-
came one of the most delightful elements of Metsu's
art. It is seen developed throughout the whole compo-
sition in ]VIr. J. P. jMorgan's Visit to the Nursery, where,
notwithstanding the sprightliness of feeling that ani-
mates the figures, each of them has its own plastic indi-
vidualit}^ of self-contained movement. Every detail
has a perfection of finish that is never finical or at the
expense of the unity of the whole. The hands and heads
have a special distinction of fluent modeling and of ex-
quisite expression. These qualities, combined with rich-
ness of local color, characterize the pictures of the sixties,
as may be seen in the examples in the National GaUery,
the Wallace Collection, and the galleries of Dresden,

Clio]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Amsterdam, and The Hague. Toward the end of this
ten years of highest production Metsu's pictures grow
stiff er in composition, colder in color, and harder in their
surfaces. The beginning of this change is noticeable in
the portrait group of The Family Geelvink, in the Ber-
lin Gallery, and characterizes also some of his latest
genre subjects. Probably the cause was failing health,
for toward the end of his life he suffered from the effects
of a bungled operation.

PIETER DE HOOCH

PiETER DE Hooch, the son of a butcher, was born in
Rotterdam in 1630, being therefore the same age as
^letsu and two years older than INIaes and Vermeer.
With these last two he has been ranked by some critics,
who consider that the trio represents the high-water
mark of Holland genre. With Maes's claim to this dis-
tinction one has ventured" to disagree, and may also dis-
pute De Hooch's for somewhat the same reason. The
latter's best period was confined to ten years, 1655-1665,
and outside of that, especially toward the end of his life,
he did some quite indifferent work.

Houbraken makes the statement that his teacher was
Nicolaes Berchem. It is accepted as a fact, the pre-
sumption being that Berchem at the time was living in
Amsterdam, in which case De Hooch would have be-
come acquainted with Rembrandt's style. That it did
not affect him, immediately at any rate, is evident from
his early work, which represents lively scenes of soldiers
[120]

DUTCH GENRE

and young girls, painted rather in the manner of Dirck
Hals or Duyster. It is possible, however, that even thus
early the Rembrandt influence may have been operating
upon him, as upon so many of the painters in Amster-
dam at that time, by drawing his attention to problems
of light, which eventuallj'' became the characteristic of
his art.

From 1653, for two years, he served as "painter and
footman" to Justus de la Grange, a rich merchant ad-
venturer, with whom he lived both in Haarlem and The
Hague. Then he married a girl from Delft and moved
to that city, his name appearing among the members of
its guild from. 1655 to 1657. It was now that he came in
touch with Vermeer, whose example helped to bring out
all that was best in him. His pictures now became ver-
itable poems of light, wrought with extraordinary con-
scientiousness and to a high pitch of refinement. He
paints the courtyards of city houses, aglow in bright sun-
shine, cool rooms opening into warmly lighted ones, the
vista often terminating in a street or canal. Always the
varieties of light are rendered with delightful natural-
ness and in a way that gives a, special charm to every
detail which the light illumines. He is not very skilful
in the representation of figures, but a master in the art
of placing them. They and every object in the scene not
only occupy their respective planes with absolute just-
ness, but the position assigned to them has been selected
with an unerring eye for decorative effect. INIoreover,
no artist has been so successful in rendering what visitors
to Holland rarely fail to observe — the propriety and
cleanliness of the Dutch home, and the sentiment that

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

seems to attach to every object in it and around it.
Among the lovehest of these interiors is No. 426 in the
Munich Pinakothek; The Mother, in the Berlin Gal-
lery; The Interior of the National Gallery; The Pantry
and The Interior, in the Rijks Museum, and an Inte-
rior in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; while two no-
table outdoor scenes are the National Gallery's A Dutch
Courtyard and the Family Group of the Berlin Gallery.
All these and others that might be cited belong to the
period between 1655 and 1665. But the enthusiasm
which these arouse is sadly d'lshed by many examples of
his later manner, which are disconnected or restless in
composition, hot in color rather than luminous, and
heavy in the shadows, while others are marred by exces-
sive hardness of surface and triteness of overwrought
detail. The latest date that appears on any of his paint-
ings is 1677, wherefore it is surmised that De Hooch's
death occurred about this time.

FRAt' VAN MIERIS THE ELDER

Of the painters bearing the name Van Mieris the most
considerable was Frans van Mieris, surnamed the Elder,
to distinguish him from his grandson, Frans van Mieris
the Younger. Between them came Willem van Mieris,
and the merit of the three as artists corresponds with the
order of their succession.

The elder Frans, born at Leyden in 1635, became a

pupil of Gerard Dou, though, like the latter, he had first

been taught by a painter on glass. The earliest part of

his career was still within the best period of Holland

[122]

DUTCH GENRE

genre, but before he died in 1681 the dechne was come;
and it was to this that his son and pupil, Willem, suc-
ceeded. Willem's pictures are still clever but tricky,
hard and glossy in texture, trivial and often silly in mo-
tive. As for his son, Frans the Younger, he belongs to
the decadence, and the Dutch consider his pictures of no
merit. There was still another Mieris, Jan by name, the
brother of Willem, who, however, lived mostly abroad
and died at the age* of thirty in Rome.

Frans the Elder was popular in his own day and con-
tinued to be held in high esteem by collectors of the eigh-
teenth century. He has been ranked with Metsu, but
not with justice to the latter, for some of his work betrays
that pettiness of motive and method which marked the
decadence of genre and has been aptly called the "snuff-
box" style. On the other hand, he had his moments of
more genuine artistry, when he would paint a picture
that even in comparison with Metsu is acceptable. These
are chiefly to be found in the galleries of Munich,
Vienna, and St. Petersburg. Among the Munich exam-
ples is The Sick Woman; she seems to have sunk to the
floor in a faint and is being tended by an old woman,
while a doctor in the shaded background is holding up
a bottle of cordial to the light and gazing at it— a figure
very familiar in Dutch genre. Unfortunately the sub-
ject suggests Jan Steen and the superior esprit with
which he w^ould have treated it. The lady wears a red-
dish jacket trimmed with white fur, and the same gar-
ment reappears in The Oyster Breakfast. Here a girl
is seated at a table liolding an oyster in one hand and a
wine-glass in the other. The picture represents the finer
[123]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

side of Van Mieris, though it is surpassed by another
example in the Munich Gallery, The Girl Before a
Mirror, which possesses the quality that has suggested
the coupling of this artist's name with that of Metsu.

In the Art-History Museum of Vienna is A Lady
and Her Doctor, in which he stands feeling her pulse as
she sits beside a bed. It is sentimentally imagined, but
extremely clever in a superficial way, the fabrics being
imitated with extraordinary skill. Far more satisfac-
tory is Cavalier in a Shop. On the right of the fore-
ground is a mass of sumptuously colored stuffs, but the
man's costume and the jacket of the woman, who stands
at a table offering something to his notice, are of black
velvet. Beside her is a curtain of ashy purple, and the
color of the background of the dim interior is a darkish
olive, the whole forming a tonal scheme of subdued rich-
ness. But the cavalier is chucking the woman under the
chin, her coy smile responding to his smile of amorous
complacency, while an old man out of the shadow of the
ingle-nook watches them. It is this sort of thing, coupled
with the skill in imitating textures, that especially com-
mended this artist to the taste of the eighteenth century.

The decline of genre reflects the changed conditions of
Holland society. For the old ideal of liberty had given
way to one of money and the power that comes in its
train. Statesmen, soldiers, and patriots had been suc-
ceeded by self-seeking politicians and ambitious trades-
men, who disdained to be burghers and aspired to the
luxury and ostentation of merchant princes. "Taste"
now became the shibboleth, and it was a taste that aped

cm]

LADY AT THE CLAVICHORD

DRESDEN GALLERY

CASPAR NETSCHER

DUTCH GENRE

the standards and manners of the French, whose influ-
ence became more and more powerful in Holland as the
seventeenth century drew to a close.

Gerard de Lairesse, a painter of Flemish extraction,
who settled in Amsterdam in the sixties, helped to estab-
lish the vogue of "taste." He had a considerable follow-
ing of students and dilettanti to whom he expounded his
views on art, assailing the vulgarity of such as Hals, and
advocating the courtly style by which the theme is "en-
nobled." He himself introduced the fashion for his-
torical pictures, vapid and theatrical ; and these qualities,
interpreted in a minute and precise style, found their
way into genre. The Dutch interiors became trans-
formed into palatial chambers, decked with columns,
amid which the inmates strut and pose with affec-
tation of superior elegance and refinement. Such are
the genre pictures of Caspar Netscher. Now and then,
as in A Lady at the Clavichord of the Dresden Gal-
lery, his motive and execution remind us that he had the
privilege of being a pupil of Terborch; but these mo-
ments are rare. Usually his pictures are but petty and
meretricious echoes of the great days of genre. Nor are
his portraits less trivial. They are numerously repre-
sented in the Rijks Museum and other galleries, sug-
gesting the popularity that he enjoyed and also ex-
plaining it; for, with few exceptions, they exhibit the
shallowness and display of a society that, like the jack-
daw in the fable, has borrowed the plumes and is aping
the manners of the peacock. The same is true of the por-
traits of Godfried Schalcken, who also indulged in
genre that supplemented the poverty of the artistic mo-
1:1253

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

live by the mild humor of its subjects. To these names
of the decadence may be added that of Pieter Cornehsz
van Slingeland.

Before completing the story of Dutch genre with a sep-
arate notice of Terborch, Jan Steen, and Vermeer, allu-
sion must be made to the "society pictures." Their pro-
totype appears in Flemish painting, in such canvases of
fashionable life as we have already noted by Lucas van
Valckenborch. The Dutch development of this motive,
however, produced smaller canvases, very carefully com-
posed, with superior quality of color and skilful render-
ing of- detail. The leader in this class of picture was
Dirck Hals (1591-1656) , who was a pupil of his brother
Frans ; and it is the latter's corporation pictures that be-
came the model for corresponding groups of "society
people," banqueting, engaged in concerts, or disporting
themselves in garden-parties. Dirck's pictures are bou-
quets of gay color, animated with lively and character-
istic action, and, notwithstanding their slightness of mo-
tive and superficiality of technique, form attractive spots
in the galleries of Europe. He, like the rest of the soci-
ety painters, varied these subjects with others of an un-
fashionable and sometimes coarse description, involving
the amusements of the soldiery on furlough or in the in-
tervals of peace. Willem Cornelisz Duyster, who died
in 1635, painted creditably both these kinds of picture;
and two other names, frequently met with in the galleries
and not unacceptably, are Palamedesz (1601-1673) and
Pieter Codde (1600-1678)

i:i263

THE DESPATCH

CHAPTER VIII

GERARD TERBORCH^ JAN VERMEER^ AND JAN STEEN

TERBORCH is the aristocrat among Dutch
painters, Rembrandt excepted. But Rem-
brandt's is an aristocracy of genius, while Ter-
borch's is an aristocracy of talent and temperament. He
owed something of this to his father, who, besides being
a painter, held an official post in his native town, Zwolle,
where Gerard was born in 1617. The father had en-
larged the horizon of his life, by travel and the study of
foreign languages, and the son followed his example.
He was already a good draftsman, when he moved to
Haarlem to study with the landscape-painter, Pieter
Moljrn. After three years spent in Haarlem, during
which he experienced the influence of Frans Hals, he
spent some time in England and later in Italy. Then
followed some five years in Amsterda,m, where he prof-
ited by the example of Rembrandt. In 1646 he went to
Miinster, in Westphalia, being present there during the
negotiations of the peace, mingling with the delegates
and painting portraits, which he afterward embodied in
the famous group-picture. The Peace of Miinster, now
in the National Gallery, to which it was presented by
the late Sir Richard Wallace. On the completion of this
picture in 1648 he visited Spain and made the acquain-
[1273

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

tance of Velasquez and his work. Returning to Hol-
land, he spent four years in ZwoUe, and then, in 1654,
the year in which he married Gertrude Matthyssen, set-
tled in Deventer. Here he continued to reside until his
death in 1681.

All these details of his career are pertinent, for they
point not only to the various influences, successively of
Hals, Rembrandt, and Velasquez, under which he came,
but also to the scarcely less important fact that he had
mixed with a variety of men of parts and consequence
and become acquainted with various kinds of civiliza-
tions. His experiences enabled him to form a very dis-
tinguished technique of his own, and at the same time
cultivated in him an extraordinarily refined taste and a
very high regard for the dignity of human nature. In
technique, taste, and point of view he became essentially
a true aristocrat.

His portraits eminently epitomize these qualities.
Usually very small in size, they suggest Velasquez in
miniature; exhibiting the same discretion in avoiding
unnecessary accessories, the same eloquent use of blacks
and grays, occasionally relieved with old rose or blue,
and, despite their minuteness, a corresponding breadth
and distinction of fluency and simplicity. All these
traits of technique are the expression of his attitude
toward his subject, which is essentially one of respect
for its humanity. This attitude is a rarer one in por-
trait-painting than might be expected. Certainly in the
Dutch School one is not impressed with its prevalence.
There is characterization, good, bad, and indifferent, and
the suggestion of the subject's position in his or her social

[:i28:]

OFFICER WRITING A LEITER

DRESDEN GALLERY

GERARD TERBORCH

GERARD TERBORCH

environment, but of the reverence for humanity as such,
very Httle. Indeed, outside of the portraits by Rem-
brandt, Terborch, and occasionally Maes, I question if
you will often find it.

A similar reverence for humanity and its environ-
ment—the product, I take it, of the artist's high-bred
respect for himself and his art — distinguishes also Ter-
borch's genre pictures. He began by painting guard-
room scenes and continued to be fond of subjects in
which officers and. soldiers figured. Sometimes the cir-
cumstances are equivocal, but their salience is not en-
forced; indeed, as Bode points out, the models for the
ladies appear to have been his sisters, while his brothers
posed for the military. The scene and the occasion are
but an excuse for a picture. In fact, the subject counts
with him for very little ; it is the pretext that it offers for
pictorial representation in which he is interested first
and last. And to this he brings an extraordinary degree
of refined sensibihty and of virile and at the same time
exquisite realization.

The virility appears in the drawing and construction
of his figures, to which Fromentin has paid so high a trib-
ute in his analysis of The Gallant Soldier, in the Louyre.
And, as the French critic points out, in discussing the
representation of the man's shoulder and arm, it is a
virility tempered with extreme sensibility. It has noth-
ing of the improvisation of Hals in the following of sur-
faces, but rather Velasquez's mastery of plane-construc-
tion ; only here, in the case of this small figure, it is not
with the open palm but with most sensitive touch of
finger-tips that we imagine ourselves discovering the

[:i293

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

reality of the form. Or, again, examine the wonderful
example of drawing in The Concert of the Berlin Gal-
lery, where the foreground is occupied by a seated figure
of a lady, whose back is toward us, as she plays the
violoncello. Even more remarkable than the fine struc-
tural reality of the figure is its play of expression, as it
bends over the instrument and seems to be vibrating to
the touch of the strings. Again, what extraordinary
realization of action, at once broadly and subtly charac-
terized, appears in the two figures of Officer Writing a
Letter^ in the Dresden Gallery ; or, in the same museum,
in the figures of the mistress and her maid in Lady
Washing Her Hands; or in the action of the hands fol-
lowed so absolutely by the gesture of the head in the Old
Woman Peeling Apples of the Art-History Museum,
Vienna! These are but examples, taken more or less
at random, of Terborch's gift of drawing, which in its
mingling of virility and exquisite sensibility is unsur-
passed in Holland painting.

Nor less admirable is the marvelous unity that he im-
parts to the whole scene. Tonality has much to do with
it, yet that is but a means. The cause is in himself, in
the reverence that he has even for the accessories in his
pictures; and the result is a harmony that is at once es-
thetic and intellectual. Mind, as well as taste, has
ordered everything. All the artists of Dutch genre had
more or less the faculty of heightening the value of
beauty in the accessjories they used; but none, not even
Vermeer, to so extraordinary a pitch of artistic propri-
ety as Terborch.

GERARD TERBORCH

His discretion in the selection is so choice, and his feel-
ing for arrangement at once so big and simple and so
concentrated, that the presence of his owti high-bred
feeling pervades almost every interior he has painted
and makes its privacy a thing of exquisite aloofness and,
if I may say so, of consecrated self-possession.

Equally distinguished is Terborch's use of color. His
gamut of local hue is larger than Vermeer's, and his
treatment of values scarcely less subtle ; while his feeling
for color is, I believe, superior. He has the faculty of
raising a local color to its highest power of esthetic sug-
gestion; witness the lady's jacket in The Concert of the
BerHn Gallery, a gallery, by the way, exceptionally rich
in examples of this artist's work. To specify its color
we may call it salmon, but this only vaguely suggests its
place on the palette; the precise register of its hue and,
still more, its quality are indescribable. Similarly evasive
and yet profoundly suggestive is his treatment of blue,
yellow, red, black, and the hues of gray from drab to
pearly white. These are enveloped in tonality. For in
this respect particularly Terborch differs from Vermeer.
The latter in his most characteristic pictures shows him-
self a student of daylight. But in Terborch's pictures,
so far as I recall them, there appears no window ; the in-
terior is dim, and the light has no pretensions to being
natural. It is a studio invention, distributed or concen-
trated to suit the imagined scheme of harmony. Ver-
meer is, in the modern phrase, a plein-airist , while Ter-
borch, true to the traditions of the Dutch School, is a
tonalist. It is in the invention and realization of his

irisi]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

tonal scheme that he is the superior of the other genre
tonaMsts, and the reason in the final analysis is that to
taste and technique he brought the refining discretion of
a superior quality of mind.

JOHANNES (jAN) VERMEER OF DELFT

Johannes or Jan Vermeer^ who is also called Johannes
van der Meer of Delft, was born at Delft in 1632. His
life was spent continuously in this city until his death
in 1675. There are records to show that he studied
with one of Rembrandt's pupils, Carel Fabritius, and
that he was not only a high official in the local Guild
of St. Luke, but highly esteemed in his community.
After his death, however, his very existence as a painter
of the Dutch School was forgotten, and his pictures,
very few of which bear signatures, were attributed to a
Vermeer of Haarlem and to another painter of the same
name in Utrecht, and to De Hooch and others. The
reason for this seems to have been the unaccountable
omission of the artist's name in Houbraken's book of
Dutch painters. Anyhow, the silence of more than a
century and a half was not broken, until the French con-
noisseur Thore, who wrote under the nom de plume of
*'W. Biirger," attracted by the beauty of some of the
signed pictures, set on foot an investigation which re-
sulted in the rehabilitation of Vermeer. Since then criti-
cism has disproved some of Burger's ascriptions, but in-
cluded other pictures, until now there are thirty assigned
with certainty to Vermeer's brush. A few others, shown
[1323

5IRL AT THE WINDOW JOHANNES (JAN) VERMEER

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM, NEW YORK

JAN VERMEER

by the records to have existed, are as yet unidentified;
but it is assumed that the total output of his twenty years
of activity did not much exceed the number already dis-
covered. It falls far short of the productivity of most of
the Dutch painters— a fact which has been explained by
the sci-upulous care with which Vermeer painted, and the
degree of perfection to which he wrought each canvas.

The appreciation of Vermeer's art has increased rap-
idly during the last twenty-five years, until to-day he is
generally ranked as the finest of the artists of genre, and,
as a painter, without rival in the Dutch School, while
some are disposed to consider him the most accomplished
painter in the history of art. These extreme admirers
are, as a rule, painters, who find in Vermeer's technique
and point of view precisely what they value most highly
in painting. For this artist is a modern among moderns.
He is not so in the sense that Rembrandt's influence is
now being felt. The latter is indirect in its suggestion of
a conception of beauty other than the classical, and in its
equally indirect suggestion of the expressional value of
light and of the symbolic use of form and color. Rem-
brandt's appeal is rather to the mind; Vermeer's to the
eye. He saw the world as the modern painter sees it,
enveloped in natural light, and rendered it, as the modern
painter tries to render it, by a close discrimination of
delicately different values. To produce a harmony he
did not introduce an arbitrary tonality, but, following
nature's plan, drew all the local colors into a balanced
relation by the unifying effects of diffused light. In this
respect Vermeer was unique in the Dutch School, and it
is because the artist of to-day, if he is alive to the modern
D333

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

spirit, works with the same motive and in the same way,
that he prizes Vermeer so highly. If, as one enthusiast
remarked to me, "the whole art of painting consists in
the right relation of values, and there can be no doubt
that it does, then Vermeer is the greatest painter that
ever lived."

The value of the criticism, of course, depends upon the
acceptance of the major premise, respecting which this
individual had no doubt. On the other hand, one may
beg to doubt it, without depreciating Vermeer. For it
comes dangerously near the position that the whole art
of painting consists in its technique ; it is an echo, in fact,
of that old shibboleth of our youth, "art for art's sake."
It lays undue stress on the purely sensuous appeal of
painting, upon the "mint and cummin," and neglects the
"weightier matter" of possible appeal to the higher fac-
ulties of the imagination. INIoreover, it overlooks the
fact that the method which Vermeer brought to such
perfection, and which because of its perfection is so
justly admired, is essentially one for small canvases.
And it was not until Vermeer settled down to these that
he developed his characteristic style.

The earliest of his dated pictures is The Proposal, in
the Dresden Gallery, which belongs to the year 1656.
The figures are of life size, and the treatment is propor-
tionately broad, almost "rough" as Bode says, who adds:
"It does not yet show us Vermeer in his developed indi-
viduality." Yet some elements of the latter are already
established : the superb plasticity in the modeling of the
forms and the frank enjoyment in local colors, the lemon
yellow of the girl's jacket forming a splendid spot
[134]

HEAD OF A GIRL

JOHANNES (JAN) VERMEER

HAGUE GALLERY

JAN VERMEER

against the equally brilliant scarlet of the young man's
coat. Again, a minor point, an Oriental rug of crimson
and yellow and blue design appears here as in later pic-
tures, such as the Girl with Water-Jug of the Metro-
politan Museum. But the Dresden masterpiece of the
artist^ youth — he was only twenty-four — differs from
his later work not only in the size of the figures and
breadth of brush work, but also in the treatment of the
chiaroscuro. The scene is not illumined with diffused
light, but with a stroke of light which gives brilliance to
the two principal figures and leaves the subordinate ones
in shadow. It is an arrangement, suggestive of the ex-
ample of Rembrandt, and hints at the fact that the pic-
ture was produced while Vermeer was still close to the
influence of his teacher. Car el Fabritius.

Another early example, betraying the same influence,
is Diana at Her Toilet of the Hague Gallery, which in
the 1905 edition of the Catalogue is still assigned to Ver-
meer of Utrecht, though later criticism accepts it as by
the artist of Delft. Closely following in subject a Diana
and Her Nymphs, painted by Jacob van Loo in 1648,
which is now in the Berlin Gallery, this picture is in the
freer, looser method of The Proposal, and even repeats
the same colors of red and yellow, though subtilized here
to a delicate rose and a kind of snuff color. The light is
still partially distributed so as to dapple the figures, and
these are painted with a flickering brushstroke that helps
to increase the fluttering effect of the light.

Two other examples have been acquired in recent
years by the Hague Gallery : an allegorical picture. The
New Testament, and Head of a Girl. In both are intro-
1:1353

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

duced the cool blue and white that characterize many of
Vermeer's later pictures. The subject of the former,
which is owned by Dr. Bredius of The Hague, is curi-
ously affected, representing a lady in blue and white silk
costume, resting her foot on a globe, as she sits beside a
table on which are a crucifix, chalice, and book. On the
wall behind her hangs a large picture of Christ upon the
cross, attended by JNIary and John ; and on the left of it
is a superb tapestry of orange, blue, and mellow green,
while a crystal ball is suspended from the ceiling. In
contrast with the glowing warmth of the curtain and the
shadowed warmth of the picture on the wall, the lady's
figure presents a cool, white-lighted spot. The plastic
feeling is strongly pronounced, the brushwork wonder-
fully limpid and firm, and the tonality extraordinarily
fine. For the picture is still a study of tone, in which it
differs from the Head of a Girl. For the latter is repre-
sented in a clearly diffused light, which is brightest
around the head, and illumines in a subtle way the tender
flesh-tints of the face, the bluish-white linen head-dress,
and the bright full blue of a portion of the gown. The
face wears a charming expression of concentration. This
picture, indeed, very decidedly forecasts Vermeer's de-
veloped individuality, yet Bode places it among his
earlier pieces, about 1656. To this period also probably
belongs the beautiful Sleeping Girl, recently acquired
from the Rudolph Kann Collection by Mr. B. Altman.

To a somewhat later date following close on 1656
Bode assigns the View of Delft, one of the greatest trea-
sures of the Hague Gallery. There is a record of its
sale in 1696, together with two other landscapes, one of
[:i363

JAN VERMEER

which has disappeared, while the other is in the Six Col-
lection in Amsterdam. The Hague picture is an unusual
example of the artist, not only because it is a landscape,
but also because of the warm light that pervades it. From
a triangle of rosy yellowish foreground one looks across
the quiet sheet of grayish-blue water to the line of houses
of reddish-drab and brown bricks, and red and blue and
yellow roofs, above which shows a high expanse of sky.
The coloring, which again, it is to be observed, includes
red and yellow, is brilliantly variegated, yet held in con-
trol by the stretches of sky and water. The ensemble is
superbly artistic, while as a presentation of a late after-
noon scene it could not be surpassed in naturalness. The
picture, in fact, stands out among all the landscapes of
the seventeenth century as being extraordinarily modern
in feeling and manner, and its influence has been very
great in the modern development of landscape-painting
in Holland.

Another picture of the period immediately following
1656 is The Cook, in the Rijks Museum. She is stand-
ing in front of a whitish wall, lighted from a window on
the left, pouring milk into a red earthenware pitcher
that stands upon the table. The latter hides the lower
part of her figure, which is clad in a lemon-colored body,
reddish-brown skirt, and deep-blue apron, while a white
cap covers her head. Here in these details — cap against
light wall, prominent note of blue, the three-quarter
length of figure, the cool lighting from a window on the
left, lastly, the plasticity of the form — we find the in-
gredients of Vermeer's later manner; but as yet the
brushwork has not the limpid exquisiteness, compressed

cist;]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

yet fluent, of his full development. On the contrary, it
is broad, inclined to roughness, loose and free, magnifi-
cent in the gusto with which it has been applied, and
vigorously stimulating in its appeal to sense imagina-
tion.

Also in the Rijks Museum is a picture which recalls
the fact that De Hooch was a member of the Guild of
St. Luke in Delft from 1655 to 1657, and that, while he
benefited most by contact with Vermeer, the latter was
also somewhat influenced by him. For in this picture.
The Letter, Vermeer seems to have experimented, not
over-successfully, with De Hooch's device of showing
one room beyond another. For an anteroom opens into
two others, side by side, in one of which on the black
and white marble floor a lady is seated in an amber dress
trimmed with ermine. She pauses in her playing of a
lute to take a letter from a servant. The picture is ex-
ceedingly choice in color and technique, but the compo-
sition is a little awkward in its division into two parts —
a device, by the way, that recalls De Hooch's The Visit,
owned by Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer, the composition
of which is open to a similar criticism.

Again, in the Rijks Museum is Young Woman Read-
ing a Letter. Here in the delicate modeling of the face
one observes the exquisite gray tones that distinguish so
many of the examples of Vermeer's fully developed
style. Also notable is the arrangement of the composi-
tion, the girl facing left, her feet hidden by a chair and
table, the latter forming a dark spot so as to increase the
luminosity on the figure and the wall. It is repeated
very closely in The Lady with a Pearl Necklace of the
Berlin Gallery, where chair and table occupy the same
ClSS]

IIBP??^

;j^t5 :VHHr

|B-i^^^^B|ilHfiHl^^^Hi

■

pi 1

!

,^g9

{

Mt^^F^

i

'^'^^^^^^1

^

HE COOK JOHANNES (JAN) VEllMEER

SIX COLLECTION NOW IN RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

JAN VERMEER

position, and the girl stands between them with her
hands similarly raised, only as she holds the necklace she
looks up, instead of down to the table as in the other pic-
ture. She wears a canary-colored jacket edged with
ermine, that appears again in Mrs. Collis P. Hunting-
ton's Lady with Lute. In the Berlin picture it sounds a
note of liveliness that is exquisitely sustained in the sil-
very resonance of the lighted room; the effect of which is
induced by the tones of olive in her skirt and the table-
cloth, by a deep almost colorless blue drapery over the
latter, and a shaft of dull yellow, formed by the velour
of the window-curtain. The ensemble, in fact, is one of
piquant decision and indescribable delicacy, illustrating
Vermeer's faculty of sight imagination, so that he not
only renders what he sees, but actually creates.

Between INIr. J. Pierpont ^I organ's Lady Writing
and The Lace-Maker of the Louvre there is a remark-
able companionship of arrangement and feeling. In
each case the figure is seated, bending over a table; the
jacket is canary-colored, and blue is introduced in the
table-cloth of the former picture and in a cushion in the
other, while in both the sensitive expression of the head
and hands is echoed in the delicate precision of the ob-
jects on the table. In both cases the luminosity of the
scene is enhanced by a shadowed mass on the left of the
foreground. Mr. IMorgan's picture in loveliness of color,
exquisiteness of handling, and inexpressibly subtle feel-
ing rivals its sister piece of the Lou\Te.

It is in this element of feeling alone that these two pic-
tures possibly excel the Girl with Water-Jug of the
^letropolitan Museum. For the latter's beauty of color,
with its deep bell-like note of blue and the resonance of

i:i39]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

blue, more or less faintly hovering over the cap and
kerchief and permeating the atmosphere, is misur pass-
able. Perfect also is the handling of this picture, both as
to its suggestion of the plastic reality of everything rep-
resented and its consummate delicacy of manipulation;
while in one particular it surpasses both the others and is
in Vermeer's finest possible manner. This is the extraor-
dinary propriety with which each detail of the composi-
tion is introduced. Everything has been selected and
placed with the choicest discretion; nothing is confused
or unexplained, everything is a triumph of incomparable
simplicity and exquisite adjustment. Only, I repeat, in
feeling ; in the expression of the head, arms, and hands is
there lacking something of the exquisite finesse of the
above two pictures and of certain other examples.

Occasionally, as in The Coquette of the Brunswick
Gallery, A Lady at a Spinet, in the National Gallery,
and The Music Lesson, owned by Mr. Henry C. Frick,
the figures display a consciousness of themselves or of
the onlooker; their personality looks out from its own
surroundings. On the other hand, it is rather a charac-
teristic of Vermeer as of Terborch, that the people in his
pictures seem immersed in themselves. The scene is
wrapped in privacy, undisturbed by the suggestion of an
outsider. But the most signal instance of a scene,
actually arranged, and posed as if to be viewed by
others, is the example of The Artist in His Studio, in
the Czernin Gallery, Vienna. In color and mingled
breadth and delicacy of treatment it is superb; but in
place of the artist's usual sincerity of feeling, it is pos-
sible to detect a suspicion of affectation.
D40]

I

THE ARTIST IN HIS STUDIO JOHANNES (JAN) VERMEER

CZERNIN GALLERY, VIENNA

JAN STEEN

A signal example of Vermeer's sincerity and, inas-
much as it is a portrait, unique, hangs in the Museum of
Fine Arts in Budapest. It is the Portrait of a Lady.
She is heavy-featured and of homely type, rather resem-
bling the woman in the Rijks INIuseum picture. The
Cook. A white cap tightly grasps her head; a broad
white collar, fastened with a tuft of gold braid, falls
over her black dress, the cuffs of which are of white lawn.
She folds her hands at the waist, one of them in a cream
kid glove, trimmed with gold braid, the other suspending
its fellow, while she holds a black fan. The face is re-
lieved on one side by greenish-black transparent shadows
and wears an expression of dull self-oblivion that is al-
most poignant and gives to the portrait a grave dis-
tinction.

In conclusion, it is worthy of note that Vermeer's
painting-career of scarcely more than twenty years
passed from its experimental stage to a full develop-
ment from which there was no decline. He did not
toward the finish lapse from his finest ideals, like Maes
and De Hooch, nor mingle pot-boilers with masterpieces
in the manner of Jan Steen. He maintained consis-
tently the artistic integrity of a scrupulously exacting
conscience.

JAN STEEN

Jan Steen was the chameleon of Dutch painting. Be-
sides genre he essayed portraiture and Biblical subjects;
alternated between small and large canvases ; at one time
suggests a recollection of some other artist, by turns Van
Ostade, Terborch, ^laes, Metsu, Van Mieris, or even

cm]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Vermeer; at other times is incomparably himself, and
still again not infrequently falls below his own standard.
He has left more examples than any other genre artist;
for dozens mentioned in old catalogues have disappeared,
yet still some five hundred survive. He is numerously
represented in public and private collections, yet in so
many styles and varieties of quality that his artistic per-
sonality is apt to seem evasive, while the impression he
arouses is by turns one of enthusiasm, indifference, and
resentment.

By degrees, however, his personality emerges, as one
becomes conscious of a trait that is shared by all his pic-
tures. It is their liveliness of characterization, exhibited
not only in the individual figures, but also in the inven-
tiveness of grouping and in the peculiar vivacity with
which the spirit of the scene has been rendered. He is of
all the genre artists the supreme delineator of Dutch life
among the lower middle classes in the Leyden and Haar-
lem of his day; depicting it, by turns, with something of
the large-heartedness of a Shakspere, the wit and satire
of a Moliere, and the coarseness of a Rabelais. But in
every vein, whether of broad survey or trenchant scru-
tiny, he is human ; for the most part genial in his outlook,
and always fresh in observation. It is probably because
of this that Waagen characterizes him as "next to Rem-
brandt certainly the greatest genius among the painters
of the Dutch School," an opinion which is shared by W.
Biirger (Thore), while Dr. Bredius styles him "the
greatest genre painter of the seventeenth century, one of
the wittiest delineators of human folly, the character
painter par excellence"

JAN STEEN

The standard, in fact, by which these and other ad-
mirers test him, and which must be apphed by every one
who would reach a just estimate of this many-sided ar-
tist, is bigger than that of technique. Steen drew well,
but could be slipshod and incorrect in drawing; exhib-
ited an extraordinary gift of improvised and occasion-
ally studied composition, yet could huddle his canvases
with a superabundance of material ; in one picture would
display a fine sense of color, to lose it in another; now
would work with a juicy and limpid brushstroke, now in
a thin method as dry as brick-dust, and could be indif-
ferent to tonality, while at other times a tonalist of choice
distinction. Therefore you cannot measure him as j^ou
d'o a Terborch or a Vermeer, or, indeed, range him for
comparison alongside of any of the other genre artists.
With them, at their best, the pictorial representation is
the chief concern, and they invite you to judge them by
their technique. But it is otherwise with Steen. You
cannot hold him to so narrow a test, any more than you
can Shakspere. Both are technicians who at times throw
technique to the winds. You may regret it or resent it ;
but, to be just, must condone the fact in face of the
bigness that looms behind.

The jovial humanity of Steen and the joy that he took
in humorous characterization were responsible for the de-
ficiencies he often exhibited as a painter. He would fre-
quently be more interested in the subject than in the
technicalities of an artistic problem; which, as we have
seen, is precisely the reverse of the attitude that most of
the great genre painters came to adopt. They were con-
cerned primarily with the making of a picture ; Steen was

1:1433

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

quite frequently engrossed with the dehneation of a phase
of life. He was so interested in the story-telling ele-
ment of the subject that under some circumstances he
permitted himself to supersede the pictorial quality of
the presentation. This should be frankly recognized in
approaching the studj^ of Jan Steen, otherwise by com-
ing upon one or two of his inferior examples we may be
led into a hasty depreciation of this great artist.

He belonged to an old respected family of Leyden,
where he was born about 1626, his father being a brewer
in prosperous circumstances. The son's name is in-
scribed in the records of the University of .Leyden, as
having been one of its students in 1646; then we hear of
him as a pupil of Nicolaes Knupfer, the painter of genre
and of Biblical and mythological subjects. Afterward
Steen studied with Jan van Goyen, whose daughter
Margaret he married. He was one of the first members
of the local Guild of St. Luke, estabhshed in 1648. From
1649 to 1654 he lived at The Hague; then returned to
Leyden for seven years, during which time he owned a
brewery near Delft. From 1661 to 1669 he resided at
Haarlem, but in the last year lost his wife and returned
to Leyden, where he remained until his death in 1679.
In 1672 he had obtained permission from the magistrate
of Leyden to maintain a cafe at his house, and the fol-
lowing year took a second wife, Maria van Egmont, the
M'idow of a local bookseller. Houbraken states that they
lived happily together, though their larder was often ill-
stocked; but he is not so charitable toward Steen's con-
nection ^\ath the liquor trade. This fact, coupled with
the jovial character of the artist's pictures and enlivened

JAN STEEN

by hearsay information from a painter, Carel de Moor,
led this story-monger into much tittle-tattle about the
artist's reckless habits. To-day, by the best authorities,
this view of Steen is discredited. It is, however, quite
clear that he was often in desperate states ; for example,
in the February after his first wife's death an apothe-
cary seized his goods and sold his pictures to satisfy a
debt of ten florins ! But the reason was not idleness, for
he was the most prolific painter of his day; it is to be
found in the miserable price for which he had to sell his
work. No wonder he tried to eke out his finances by
keeping a brewery, which, by the way, was a privilege
specially granted at that time only to a few families of
particular respectability. As to the cafe, since he had to
turn to trade, he naturally adopted the one with which
his family had been connected ; the disgrace, if there were
any, not being his, but the public's, who paid him better
for drinks than for his pictures.

So far as the dates on his pictures show, his period of
production lasted for twenty-five years, from 1653 to
1678, so that his output averaged more than twenty pic-
tures a year. Thebest period may probably be reckoned
during the years from 1654 to 1669, which covered his
second sojourn in Leyden and his visit to Haarlem. His
family was growing up around him, and the children
from year to year figure in his pictures, and his hand-
some wife, INIargaret, appears as a center of kindliness
and comfort, while his own person often adds the note
of jolhty. To these pleasant times belong the incompa-
rable "family scenes"— .4 Homely Scene, The Feast of
St. Nicholas, and The Happy Family of the Rijks Mu-
[145]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

seiim; The Christening Party of the Berlin Gallery;
While the Old Ones Sing the Young Ones Pipe of the
Hague Gallery; and the Cassel Gallery's Twelfth
Night, where JNIargaret appears for the last time, since
the picture was painted in the year of her death.

These and other group-pictures, such as The Prince's
Birthday of the Rijks INIuseum, are works of genius,
unique in painting. For they are not constructed ac-
cording to the methods of the schools, but are the prod-
ucts of a natural gift of seeing and rendering naturally
a glimpse of busy life. Yet with a tact that avoids con-
fusion ; places ever5'"thing in its own plane of space with
admirable precision and propriety ; leaves no intervals of
uncertainty or obscurity; but secures to the whole an
artistic reasonableness and completeness; and all this
with an art that conceals art, and makes the scene appear
to be one of complete naturalness. No other artist has
ever reconciled nature and art quite so happily; and
when one passes from the technical appreciation to a
study of the varieties of character, depicted in the per-
sonages of all ages from the baby to the grandparents,
and notes the mingling of humor and tenderness in the
sentiment and the embracing large-heartedness that has
inspired the whole, it is to marvel at and rejoice in the
uniqueness of Steen's genius.

Then, by way of contrast, mark his treatment of a
subject in which only a few persons figure. To myself
his series of medical visits presents perhaps the most
charming example of this concentrated phase of his art.
Witness The Sick Lady of the Rijks Museum, where
the young woman sits with her head supported by a pil-
[1*6]

JAN STEEN

low, its whiteness against the pallor of her face, while the
doctor stands counting her pulse. It is a masterpiece of
tender characterization, for here the physician also is
gentle and solicitous. However, he is not so in A Doctor
Visiting a Sick Young Woman (No. 166) of the Hague
Gallery. There he is boorish in appearance and sug-
gests ignorance; in rough contrast to the pathetically
fragile little lady, lying in bed and so ruefully gazing at
the medicine-glass in the maid's hand. The picture is
not dated, but I wonder if it was painted after the
artist's rude experience with the apothecary who sold
him up for ten florins ! Again, in The Doctor's Visit of
the National Gallery, the man presents a different trait
of behavior. It is not tenderness toward a delicate
young thing as in the Amsterdam picture, but respectful
solicitude toward an older woman, who, by the way, re-
minds one of Steen's wife, Margaret. She is dressed in a
jacket of old rose, edged with fur, and a silvery-blue
skirt, while the doctor wears a suit of black with olive
velvet sleeves. In the Amsterdam picture his black cos-
tume is relieved by a silk cloak of ashy brown, while the
young woman is in pearly-gray satin, trimmed with
white fur, a peep of blue slipper appearing from beneath
the skirt. In fact, the color of these pictures is exceed-
ingly choice; differing from the richness and liveliness
of the family groups; corresponding in its subtle deli-
cacy to the delicate pointedness of the characterization
that is not without a certain dry flavor of wit.

It is between these two extremes of generous freedom
and highly wrought restraint that the pendulum of
Steen's art swings, with such wealth of variety that it is

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

impossible to specialize further. However, a word or
two must be said in conclusion about his treatment of
Biblical subjects, of which The Marriage at Cana and
The Expulsion of Hagar, both in the Dresden Gallery,
may be cited as typical examples.

Steen's treatment of Biblical, as of occasional mjrtho-
logical, subjects was purely in the vein of genre; not,
however, with any resort to emotional or dramatic ap-
peal, as in the case of Rembrandt. In translating the
old scene into the vernacular of Dutch middle-class or
low-class life, Steen preserves nothing of its religious
significance, or even of its epic dignity. The theme with
him becomes simply a vehicle for characterization and
possible humor. Thus, in The Marriage at Cana, Christ
is standing at the table in the act of blessing a Dutch
wedding-party, but all this is in the background. The
salient features of the scene are occurring in the fore-
ground, where a fat cellarer hands a glass of wine to a
fiddler, and a slattern woman leans against a cask, giv-
ing a drink to a boy. In The Expulsion of Hagar,
Sarah sits inside the door, "examining" the little Isaac's
head; Hagar weeps as Abraham sadly dismisses her:
while Ishmael strings his bow, two spaniels are catching
fieas, and sheep, cows, and poultry are scattered through
the yard. ^leanwhile, though the pictures make no ap-
peal to the spiritual imagination, the sensuous imagina-
tion may be stimulated by the choiceness of their charm
of color. Perhaps, however, if one wishes to epitomize
Steen's attitude toward the subjects he took from the
Bible and the classics, one may best compare his render-
ing of The Disciples at Emmaus (Rijks Museum) with
[148]

JAN STEEN

Rembrandt's treatment of the same subject in the
Louvre. Instead of Christ being the pathetic center of
divine illumination, as in the latter picture, Steen has
placed Him in the shadow of the background, leaving the
room, while the disciples, attended by a. serving- woman,
are gazing disconsolately at the table, which is garnished
with— of all imaginably incongruous things— a lemon.

1:149:

CHAPTER IX

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

TO the Dutch method of treating Biblical subjects
we have already alluded in the case of Rem-
brandt and Jan Steen. It shows in common the
motive of translating the story into the vernacular of
Dutch life, accompanied on the part of Rembrandt with
strong emotional and dramatic appeal, expressed by
means of color and chiaroscuro. It was also Rem-
brandt's practice to employ models selected from the
Ghetto in Amsterdam. Among his followers was a
group of men who emulated his treatment of Biblical
subjects, while they also distinguished themselves in por-
traiture. Hence the convenience of considering these
two branches of Dutch painting in the same chapter.
Moreover, the incongruity between the two is not so
great as it may appear at first sight, since the Dutch
perpetuated the Flemish tendency, which was also Ger-
man, of not only personifying the sacred characters by
personages of their own day, but of reproducing so
faithfully their characterization that the heads were
practically portraits.

Among the pupils of Rembrandt who varied portrai-
ture with pictures from the Bible story were, in order of
their age, Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, Carel Fabri-
[150 3

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

tius, Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout, and Aert de Gelder ;
while another, who is known solely as a portrait-painter,
was Dirck Dircksz Santvoort.

GO VERT FLINCK

This artist (1615-1660) began by being so close an
imitator of Rembrandt's method of chiaroscuro that
many of his pictures used to be taken for his master's;
later, however, when the fashion for Italian art was re-
vived, he abandoned the chiaroscuro and devoted him-
self to line and form. Indeed, he seems to have been an
able opportunist; but to mistake him for Rembrandt
suggests a shallow conception of the latter. Flinck's
Biblical masterpiece is probably the Isaac Blessing
Jacob, in the Rijks Museum. The patriarch's half-
figure, as he sits propped up by pillows, is clad in a
splendid crimson robe ; the gesture of the arms is full of
dignity, and the head crowned with the 'majestic charac-
ter of old age. And the aged face of Rebecca is rever-
ently characteristic. The color throughout is rich, and
the light and shadow are warm and luminous. It is an
effective rendering of a grave incident, but the latter
has been seen rather than felt, and certainly not with
the depth and poignancy of feeling that Rembrandt
would have suggested. Another fine example of
Flinck's is in the Dresden GduYLerj— David Handing
the Letter to Uriah. Crimson again appears in the
king's robe, contrasted with which is a large mass of
golden yellow with red border, formed by the cloak of
1:1513

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

a secretary at his side, while Uriah's figure, kept in
shadow, is clad in peacock blue and purplish brown.
The whole forms a splendid scheme of color, and again
the characterization is extremely interesting, especially
that of the black-haired and -bearded king, who shows a
certain mingling of hardness and nervousness in his face
and demeanor. The treatment is seriously conceived,
but with rather a faint grasp of the dramatic possibil-
ities involved in the theme.

In the Angel and the Shepherds of the Louvre there
is still less feeling for the scene, except in so far as it
offered an opportunity for chiaroscuro. Even the com-
position is rather perfunctory, the shepherds being hud-
dled on the right, balanced by a cow and sheep on the
opposite side of the foreground, while the angel who
brings the message of Christ's birth appears above in
the center with cherubs. Nor is the chiaroscuro satis-
factory, for while there are some nice passages of color
in the lighted parts, the shadows are without quality and
seem used only as foils to the light, and not as having
individual value. More successful in its recollection of
the Rembrandt manner, and altogether a picture of
considerable charm, is the classical subject, Diana and
Endymion, in the Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna.

In the Dresden Gallery are two of the old-men studies
that this artist frequently painted, while a more impor-
tant example of his fondness for representing old age is
shown in the Art-History Museum, Vienna. This
Gray-Bearded Old Man suggests, like the others, the
influence of Rembrandt, but superficially. It has the
venerableness of old age, but not the power of expres-

Jl

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

sion that makes Rembrandt's treatment of this subject
so spiritually compelling.

The Louvre has a charming Portrait of a Little Girl,
in an olive-green dress, holding a spade. In arrange-
ment of costume and choice of color it is quite Rem-
brandtesque. Again, in the Berlin Gallery is a very
pleasing Portrait of a Young Woman. But it is in the
Rijks Museum that the portraiture of Flinck can best
be studied, both in corporation pictures and single fig-
ures. They vary in quality from the quite impressive
bust portrait (No. 931) of 31. Johannes Wittenhogaert
( ?) , with its mellow flesh tints and strong suggestion of
character, to the showy but perfunctory Fete of the Civil
Guard, Miinster, 16 AS. In this there is no charm of flesh
and little of fabrics. The whole is pompously theatrical,
done apparently for "business," with no eye to anything
but satisfying the vanity of the subjects.

FERDINAND BOL

Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680) in the beginning of his
career reproduced the manner of Rembrandt. His col-
oring was mellow and enriched by chiaroscuro. Later,
about 1650, the chiaroscuro became less pronounced and
the color insipid. While he is esteemed chiefly for his
portraits, he also treated Biblical subjects, as may be
seen by three examples in the Dresden Gallery and two
in the Rijks Museum. The most pleasing of the Dres-
den pictures is Jacob Presented to Pharaoh by Joseph.
There is a very characteristic look of scrutiny in Pha-

THE STORY. OF DUTCH PAINTING

raoh's face, while his jewel-bespangled cloak, with its
broad border of white and black fur, affords a fine mass
of scintillating color, juxtaposed to the rich creamy cos-
timie of Joseph and the crimson of the old man's. The
picture, indeed, presents a very handsome color-scheme,
though one may discover a certain stiffness and theatri-
cality in the gesture of Joseph's hands. The accom-
panying picture. Rest of the Holy Family during Its
Flight into Egypt, is over six feet high and suggests a
canvas too large for the material introduced, so that one
third of it is filled up with supernumerary articles, such
as a saddle and a basket of tools. One suspects that the
picture may have been intended as a decoration for some
wall-space, as the very large example in the Rijks ]Mu-
seum certainly was. For this, Abraham Receiving the
Angels was one of five panels painted for a room in a
house at Utrecht, the other four being now in the abbey
of ]Middelburg in Zeeland. A mild reflection of Italian
Renaissance feeling is suggested hy the comme il faut
disposition of the angels' draperies, but their coloring of
golden amber is finely Rembrandtesque; so, too, the
glow of the yello^^ing beech-tree that spires up into the
top of the composition, and the plum-gray velvet of
Abraham's robe. The picture, in fact, while shallow in
its treatment of the incident, is finely decorative. On
the other hand, the Salome Dancing before Herod, a
work apparently of Bol's later period, is an absurdly
bad picture, bright and flimsy in color and entirely
trifling as a study of form.

Of Bol's capacity in portrait-painting a good exam-
ple is Portrait of a Mathematician, in the LomTc. He
is shown resting one arm on a balustrade, the body, in
[154]

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

black with a white collar, being in profile, while the
gray-haired head, covered with a black cap, is facing
round to the spectator, as he points with a ruler to a
geometrical figure on a blackboard. It is a piece of
honest characterization, blending vivacity and dignity.
In quite a different vein is his portrait of a girl in profile
in the Liechtenstein Gallery. She has soft pale blond
hair, and the figure is enveloped in that yellow tonality
which marks Bol's transition from the Rembrandtesque
manner to his later one. The girl with her protruding
forehead bears a striking resemblance to a girl, painted
by Rembrandt, in Room VI of the same gallery, and a
comparison of the two pictures offers an interesting
commentary upon the essential difference between the
master and one of his most successful pupils.

Among five portraits by Bol in the Munich Pinako-
thek No. 338 may be specified as particularly handsome.
It is that of a man with dark-brown hair and a mustache
and imperial of lighter hue, possibly Govert Flinck.
He wears a black cap and cloak and leans his arm upon
a table. The following number in the catalogue is al-
lotted to a portrait of this man's wife. She is shown as
far as the waist, where her hands are folded, the body
full front, the head a little to the left. The face is beau-
tifully modeled in clear flesh-tones, surrounded by
golden-brown hair in ringlets. Beneath her white stom-
acher is a dull-red gown with olive sleeves. Thus the
color-scheme is Rembrandtesque, with an envelop of
warm amber atmosphere, while the serious sympathy
with which the characterization has been rendered would
not be unworthy of Bol's great master.

Unfortunately, Bol by no means maintamed this high
[155]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

standard, as maj'^ be seen among the numerous examples
of his portraits in the Rijks ^Museum. They mostly be-
long to his later period. The best is the earliest one,
painted in 1657, representing the Sice Governors of the
Huiszittenhuis, seated round a table in black clothes and
steeple hats. The heads are well characterized and the
flesh- tones luminous; but an air of attitudinizing per-
vades the assemblage, which has rather the prim, set
manner of a photographic group. And much the same
feehng is aroused by the Four Governors of the Leper
House, which is considered in Holland his masterpiece.
In fact, it is not in the formal arrangement of a corpora-
tion picture, but in a single figure, that Bol is seen to
best advantage. Yet some of the examples of these in
the Rijks Museum, such as the Roelof Meiilenaar and
Maria Rey, are commonplace parodies of Rembrandt's
manner, while that of the sculptor Artus QueUinus is a
parody of Van Dyck's elegance. Bol, in fact, was an
able assimilator of his master, Rembrandt, and as long
as he retained the enthusiasm of his youth, painted cred-
itable and often excellent portraits. Later, however, he
drifted into the swim of social decadence, and his work is
characterized by affectation, vapidity, and perfunctori-
ness.

CAREL FABRITIUS

Fabritius (about 1620-1654), after studying wath
Rembrandt, resided in Delft, where he became, it will
be recalled, the teacher of Jan Vermeer. His life was
prematurety cut short by the explosion of a powder-
[156]

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

magazine, while he was in the act of painting the por-
trait of Simon Decker, sacristan of the old church at
Delft. In consequence, the number of his pictures is
small, and some of those which appear under his name
in the catalogues are of disputed attribution. He must
have had a precocious talent, for the Portrait of Abra-
ham de Notte, in the Rijks INIuseum, is dated 1640, when
the artist was scarcely twenty. It is a bust portrait
in which the black-haired head, set against a light
background, is well enveloped in atmosphere, while the
features are fluently modeled in warm, luminous tones.
It proves him to have been an exceptionally apt pupil
of the master, and helps to justify the attribution to him
of the other picture in the Rijks Museum, The Decapi-
tation of St. John the Baptist, a powerful and attractive
work. A golden luminosity, rich in quality, pervades
the whole canvas. The characterization of the figures
is striking. The executioner, a sturdy, brutal figure,
with a rubicund, swollen face, showing above his white
shirt, holds the head upon a salver, with the absolute un-
concern of a butcher serving meat. A corresponding
lack of emotion is apparent in the two female figures,
daintily dressed and of girlish refinement, Salome's eyes
gazing into vacancy with a wistful expression, while
Herodias, looking but little older, gazes at the head with
a slight air of curiosity. The conception of these women
is early Italian rather than what one would associate
with Dutch of the seventeenth century, and recalls the
expression of INIantegna's Judith rvith the Head of Ho-
lof ernes. They suggest a sexless abstraction, moved by
no active impulse, yet hauntingly fascinating in its
D573

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

young passionlessness. In the Berlin Gallery a Study
of a Man Praying is attributed to Fabritius, while in the
]Munich Pinakothek are two portraits of young men
associated with his name. The bust portrait, No. 344,
is definitely assigned to him, while the half-length, No.
345, once attributed to him, is now^ assigned to Rem-
brandt. It represents a young man with long hair parted
in the center, who, holding a sheaf of paper and a pen,
seems to have paused in his WTiting and is looking up
and out of the picture M'ith an expression of rapt medita-
tion. In its different way it is akin to the expression of
the Salome in the other picture. That so gravely fine a
picture should have passed for a Fabritius suggests the
character of the estimation which hangs about the mem-
ory of this artist, who did not live to fulfil the promise
of his youth. ^loreover, what is known and what is con-
jectured about him suggests the value of his influence
upon Jan Vermeer, whose own tendency to give his fig-
ures a concentrated absorption may possibly be traced
to this source.

GEEBRANDT VAN DEN EECKHOUT

Eeckhout (1621-1674), the son of an Amsterdam
goldsmith, was the first pupil to enter Rembrandt's
studio and one of his closest imitators. For example, in
The Woman Taken in Adultery of the Rijks Museum,
the face of the lonely figure of Christ is the center of
light amid the coruscation of rich coloring formed by
the costumes of the scribes and Pharisees, while a quieter
note of dignity appears in the fine green and plum
[158;]

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

draperies of the kneeling woman. The color is sonorous,
yet its echo does not penetrate to the depths of the sur-
roundings, the shadows of which are inclined to be
opaque and unexplorable. Better in this respect, that
its shadows are more luminous, is the Christ tvith the
Doctors of the ]Munich Pinakothek. Here the strongest
light centers on the head of an old rabbi, so as to bring
out the color of his turban and beard while leaving his
face in shadow; a device whicli makes the little face of
the Child Christ, though it is clearly illuminated, seem
by comparison pathetically insignificant. Meanwhile
the light touches here and there the other figures in the
group and penetrates their environment of shadow. It
is worth while to compare this picture with the series of
Biblical subjects by Rembrandt in the same museum,
particularly the Adoration of the Shepherds. In the
Berlin Gallery Eeckhout is represented by Raising of
Jairus's Daughter and a Presentation of Christ in the
Temple. These pictures, particularly the latter, are
wonderfully reminiscent of Rembrandt, finely composed
in masses of light and shade and sumptuous in color. In
a third example, Mercury and Argus, Eeckhout has
treated this mythological subject with some charm. The
young nude figure of Mercury, with a blue drapery over
his knees, as he sits playing his pipe, is a charming white
spot against the warm ruddiness of the rocky landscape,
where beside a white and red cow the brown nude form
of Argus is stretched, as if in sleep. Farther back in
shadow are the sheep and goats. The feeling of the pic-
ture is pleasant ; but its suggestion is inclined to be rather
superficial.

1:1593

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Of this artist's portraits there is an example in the
Brunswick Gallery and one excellent specimen in the
National Gallery. This is The Wine Contract, in
which the four governors of the Wine Guild of Amster-
dam, dressed in black, are seated at a table, examining
a contract.

AEKT DE GELDER

De Gelder was a pupil of Rembrandt's old age. He
himself was not born until 1645, and, it is supposed, was
little over fifteen when, after studying with Hoogstraten
in their native city, Dordrecht, he went to Amsterdam.
Then he returned to Dordrecht and resided there until
his death in 1727. He is thus one of the latest of the
artists of the period we are considering. An early work,
dated 1671, directly inspired by Rembrandt, is in the
Dresden Gallery. The Presentation of Christ in the
Temple is a reproduction in color of Rembrandt's well-
known etching of this subject, worked out in red and
brown and olive green, enveloped in a dull, warm glow,
which, however, has more of mannerism than of sugges-
tion to the imagination. The accompanying example in
this gallery. An Important Document, shows a man and
woman seated at a table, covered with a red cloth, exam-
ining a paper. The coloring is warm, the hands and
faces, however, inclining to an unpleasant brickiness of
red, while the whole aspect of the scene is lifelike but
uninspired. The Dresden Gallery also owns the Por-
trait of a Halberdier J a well-painted and fairly interest-
ing study of a stout man, with rosy, glowing face be-
D60]

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

neath a fur-brimnied hat, whose uniform is of various
tones of ohve green.

De Gelder is also represented by three portraits in the
Rijks ISIuseum and by a Bibhcal subject, Judah and
Thamar, in the Hague Gallery, but the best example of
the latter kind is in the Museum of Art at Budapest.
This Esther and Mordecai, dated 1685, shows the queen,
seated at a table before an open book, resplendent in a
brocaded and jeweled cloak and a tagged and tufted
dress, listening while JNIordecai, bending forward with
humble admiration, addresses her. The coloring is rich
and mellow, and the delineation of character, especially
in the case of Mordecai, has considerable suggestion of
the spirit of the story.

DmCK DIRCKSZ SANTVOOET

If it is a fact, as generally supposed, that Santvoort
(1610-1680) was one of Rembrandt's pupils, he did not
follow the master's use of chiaroscuro, but rather the
example of his elaborately detailed portraits. In Sant-
voort's owTi case, as he may be studied in the Rijks IVIu-
seum, this led at first' to hardness of modehng, as may be
seen in the portrait group of the Dirck Bas Jacohsz
Family, dated 1634, where the stiffness of the composi-
tion is increased by the gaze of every face being focused
to one point. Still hard, but full of character, is a later
portrait, dated 1638, of Four Ladies of the Spinhuis.
The latter was the house of correction, and these guar-
dians and matrons look competent to rule it firmly.

cm 3

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

More theatrical in arrangement, with hands pointing
this way and' that, is the Four Governors of the Serge
Hall (1643). Meanwhile, three years earlier, Sant-
voort painted the single portrait of Frederick Dircksz
Alervyn, which again is harsh in texture and bronze-like
in color. On the other hand, the portrait of this man's
-v^dfe, Agatha Geelvinch, has a distinct charm. The light
falls upon her forehead and soft hair, which is frizzed
out with little curls, while the features are modeled with
a dainty discretion that recalls a Florentine primitive.
Then follow two portraits of children, respectively ten
and nine years old, Martinus and Clara Alewyn. They
are represented as a shepherd and shepherdess, the for-
mer in a rose tunic, with a scarf of goldish sheen, quite
Rembrandtesque in quality, the latter in a satin dress of
the hue of strawberries and cream. She carries a bow
and arrow, and is accompanied b}^ lambs, while the boy
is attended by a black greyhound. The hands and faces
are well modeled and have expression, while the painting
throughout is fluent and limpid. The pictures are in-
clined to sentimentality, which, however, is more easily
excused because of the youngness of the children and the
painter-like quahty of the technique.

BARTHOLOMEUS VAX DER HELST

From the above followers of Rembrandt, who reflect the
manner but so little of the greatness of the master, it is
a relief to turn to a portrait-painter who, while he owed
something to Rembrandt in the way of chiaroscuro, was

[162]

PORTRAIT OF PAUL POTTER BARTHOLOMEUS VAX DER HELST

HAGUE MUSEUM

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

an independent personality and one of force. It is Bar-
tholomeus van der Heist, born in Haarlem in 1613, whose
life, however, was spent in Amsterdam, where he died in
1670. It is in the Rijks INIuseum that he is most bril-
liantly represented, though his single portraits stud the
galleries of Europe. Their usual feature is direct and
vivid characterization, conveyed without much persua-
siveness of manner, but singularly sincere. One exam-
ple, however, the Portrait of Paul Potter^ is an excep-
tion, being both in technique and feeling one of the most
persuasive portraits to be met with. It has in it also a
suggestion of the feeling for decorative arrangement,
which was elaborated on so simiptuous a scale in the cor-
poration pictures of the Rijks Museum.

In the chapter on Hals I alluded to Van der Heist as
his inferior in composition and characterization. And
the judgment stands, especially when you find yourself
at Haarlem in the presence of the superb facility and
quality of Hals's genius. None the less, when you face
the prodigious output of Van der Heist's talent in the
Rijks Museum, you realize that, while he was less effi-
cient as a painter, less gifted with the ease, as it were, of
improvisation, in his compositions, he had yet an exuber-
ance of invention and a gusto for characteristic general-
ization, so amazing that from a distance one may be
disposed to question if Hals, after all, w^as so much
greater. At his best he undoubtedly was, having the
artist's fine gift of heightening the significance of what
he handled, and even in his less memorable work exhibit-
ing more or less of that magical manipulation which is
itself an inspiration. Beside him Van der Heist is less
[1633

11

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

the artist than a mighty craftsman, and, when one grows
enthusiastic over him, it is not because he has heightened
the appeal of his material, but because he realizes so won-
derfully the prodigal physical exuberance of his day.
This reaches its culmination in his masterpiece, The
Banquet of the Civic Guard (No. 1135). Grouped
around the standard-bearer, who is in black velvet with
a sash of the same blue silk as the flag, are some two
dozen figures, arranged in natural positions, with easy
gestures and heads and hands individually characterized.
In these particulars and the treatment of the fabrics
there is more than mere craftsmanship. The latter has
been regulated by a superior order of intellect.

It is here that one seems to discover the essential dif-
ference between Van der Heist and Hals. The former
is intellectually the bigger man, while Hals's distinction
is a superiority of feehng. His work, therefore, has the
sensuous charm in which the other's is deficient. When
in the light of this you reexamine Van der Heist's mas-
terpiece, it is to discover that what is lacking in it is the
esthetic quality. The composition is not pervaded with
atmosphere, in the various planes of which the figures
might take on differences of subtle value; and, while
there is an arrangement of light and shade, it is used
only to assist -the modeling of the figures, and with no
feeling for heightening the beauty of the color-scheme
by the luminosity of the hues. The result is that the
scene, for all its assertion of vital force, is lacking in
vivacity. The same test, applied to the other corpora-
tion pictures and single portraits by this artist in the
Kijks Museum, corroborates the conviction that, apart
[;i64]

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

from Rembrandt, Van der Heist was the biggest intel-
lectual force among the portrait-painters of Holland,
but that he lacked the esthetic feeling and accordingly
the quality of technique which alone make him inferior
to Hals.

THOMAS DE KEYSER

Son of an architect and sculptor, Thomas de Keyser was
born in Amsterdam, 1596 or 1597, and died there in
1667. His career is divided by a date about 1628. Be-
fore this his portraits are similar in character to those of
Nicolaes Elias, with which they have been confused.
The figures have a hardness and some stiffness, but un-
mistakable carrying power; the flesh is leathery, dull in
color, and expressionless, and the composition either for-
mally arranged in rows, or artlessly strung out in sepa-
rate items. Thus his earlier portraits present a curious
mingling of power and naivete. They are representa-
tive of real people, but are not yet conceived with an
artist's eye. Then by .1628 a. change begins to appear
in De Keyser's work, as it also did a few yea^-s later in
that of Elias. Atmosphere creeps into his pictures; the
flesh becomes more luminous, the composition at once
more varied and more unified, and the figures, mthout
losing their character, acquire amenity and dignity. It
is said that De Keyser's work influenced the young
Rembrandt when he first settled in Amsterdam, and it
would seem as if also the older man gradually gained
something from the younger.

In the Rijks Museum an example of De Keyser's
[165;]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

early style is The Company of Captain Cloeck (No.
1300) . It is true it is dated 1632 ; but it still exhibits the
hard-fleshed, vacantly staring faces, the figures in un-
imaginative poses and in no atmospheric envelop, and
spiritless treatment of the fabrics. But compare The
Family Meeheech Cruywaghen (No. 1349). Here the
group is held together by a pleasing background of trees
and house, bathed in a yellow glow. It is the homestead,
and the comfort of it is reflected in the charming spon-
taneousness of feeling in the figures— father, mother,
and grandmother, and six happy children. Each is de-
lightfully individualized, and the expression of the
whole picture is one of dignity and sweetness. Or for
dignity, again, of a very refined order, take the eques-
trian Portrait of Pieter Schout (No. 1650). There is
here a fine feeling for color, the black horse and its
rider's black hat and yellow coat showing grandly
against the drab gray of the lofty sky, below which are
sand-dunes with light-green verdure. The picture,
though scarcely three feet high, has a sense of space and
the bigness of a large canvas.

The startling difference between De Keyser's two
styles is well exemplified in the Berlin Gallery, where
you can compare the hard spread-out arrangement in
black dresses of An Old Lady and Her Three Daugh-
ters with the genial dignity oi An Old Man and His
Two Son^. An exceedingly interesting Portrait of a
Woman hangs in the Museum of Art in Budapest.
About fifty years old, she is seated in an arm-chair al-
most facing us ; in a handsome black silk dress, trimmed
with brown fur, with a wide starched ruff and a lawn cap
[;i663

(I

BIBLICAL SUBJECTS AND PORTRAITURE

with wings over the ears. Her honest face is modeled
in firm planes, and is ruddy with health. This painter-
like and admirably himian portrait is dated in the year
that has been adopted as separating the artist's two
periods: namely, 1628.

Among the portrait-painters whose work exhibits the
characteristic qualities of Dutch seventeenth-century
art are INIichiel Jansz van INIierevelt (1567-1641) and
Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn, both of whom lived at
The Hague, where they are well represented in the Mau-
ritshuis; Salomon de Bray (1597-1664), who lived in
Haarlem, where he can be seen to. best advantage, and
Paulus Moreelse (1571-1638), who was born and lived
the greater part of his hfe in Utrecht. To the average
student of painting the last named is probably the most
interesting. The others are highly esteemed in Hol-
land, though it is pointed out that in the latter part of
their lives quality gave way to quantity. Indeed, they
were so prolific that one tires of trying to pick good
examples out of the mass of mediocrity. In the case of
Moreelse, however, it is different. His works, less nu-
merous, have a choiceness of feeling and execution, his
portraits of women and children being especially gra-
cious in conception and treatment. Witness, for ex-
ample, in the Rijks jNIuseimi the Maria van Utrecht and
the portrait of a child of some seven years. The Little
Princess. In place of breadth and freedom, these pic-
tures are precise and meticulous in brushwork, the de-
tails of the costumes elaborately reproduced, the faces
softly modeled with faint greenish-gray shadows. Yet
Ll67n

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

they have character and suggest reality and possess an
undeniable charm. Somewhat broader in method is his
Portrait of a Young Lady, in the Budapest Museum.
Seen to the waist, she is in black velvet, with cuffs and a
deep collar of exquisite point-lace. Her pleasantly
thoughtful face is painted with a somewhat dull and
heavy brush, yet the expression is that of life, and its
charm is increased by the soft hair being worn in large
rolls over the ears and confined in a cap, of which only
the dainty edges of lace appear. It is a portrait of sin-
gularly choice refinement.

To the occasional portraiture of the genre artists
Maes, Terborch, and Netscher we have alluded in an-
other chapter.

Hies]

CHAPTER X

LANDSCAPE

IN the Berlin Gallery are two small examples of
Holland Landscape with the Hamlet of Rhenen.
They are by Hercules Seghers, whom Bode points
to as the father of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape.
Similar in general design, they are distinguished by a
fine sweep of almost clear sky, swimming with vapor,
from which a level country, dotted with the roofs and
church towers of a hamlet and threaded by a stream,
stretches in pale-yellow tones, broken up with brownish
shadows, to the foreground. The identification of the
scene and the assignment of these pictures to Seghers
have been made possible by comparison with some etch-
ings of the same artist that modern Dutch research has
discovered. By the same means other pictures, including
a Landscape in the Ufiizi Gallery, Florence, which used
to be attributed to Rembrandt, have been restored to
Seghers. This one again shows a plain, intersected by
a stream, but bounded on the right by the abrupt shoul-
der of a mountain, whose top is merged in dark cloud,
while the rest of the sky is an open expanse of whitish
light. In the contrast of this with the dark tones of the
ground, weirdly interspersed' with fitful gleams, there is
an extraordinary impressiveness. It is no wonder that
it was mistaken for a Rembrandt; and the interest in
" [169]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Seghers deepens when it is ascertained that Kembrandt
himself was strongly influenced during his earlier years
in Amsterdam by the older artist. This has been proved
by a comparison of certain of the etchings of the two
men.

Hercules Seghers, in fact, seems to have been in his
o^n day very much what jNIichel was to the modern re-
vival of landscape-painting in France. He was a fore-
runner of the later movement, but unrecognized by the
world, while almost the only records that exist of him
are documentary evidences of debts. He was born in
1590, probably in Haarlem; worked in Haarlem,
Utrecht, and The Hague, but chiefly in Amsterdam,
where he died about 1640.

In the few examples of his work that still survive, we
can trace the twofold tendency of Dutch landscape: in
one direction its note of simple truthfulness to the facts
of nature, and in the other the tincture of these facts with
a romantic spirit. And, in addition to thus setting the
motive, Seghers proclaimed the Dutch artist's fondness
for effects of sky, for tonalities of grays and browns,
sparingly enlivened with greens.

For the Dutch landscapists were tonalists. With the
single exception of Jan Vermeer, who approximated the
'plein-air of modern art, they transposed the hues of
nature into a scheme of color which is none the less arbi-
trary and unnatural, although it preserves the values of
nature's coloring. In comparison ^^dth the naturalistic
achievements of the modern artist, who studies nature in
her own environment of light and renders her hues as
actual light affects them, the Dutch artist was a com-

1:1703

LANDSCAPE

poser on the theme of nature, but not a naturalist. The
same, however, in only a less degree, is true of the Barbi-
zon artists. They, too, were composers of schemes of
tonality, so that, students of nature though they were,
their landscapes will not compare in naturalness of sug-
gestion with the work of many a modern man who will
probably never enjoy their fame. Let me add that I
do not mean to imply by this the essential superiority of
the modern landscape-painter. That is another ques-
tion, and only to be decided by each person for himself,
according as he selects or does not select naturalistic
representation as the standard of his taste. To one who
does not the tonal transposition may seem preferable.
Both methods, indeed, have their warrant in art.

But I press the distinction because, unless it is recog-
nized, Dutch landscape-painting cannot be properly ap-
preciated. If people approach it, and it is my experience
that many do, with modern plein-air achievements in
their eye and basing their judgment upon them, they can
only suffer disappointment. The Dutch paintings will
seem "old-fashioned," false to nature, and uninspired.
On the other hand, once the necessary attitude is as-
sumed of accepting this transposition of color and light
phenomena of nature into an equivalent of tonal values,
proper appreciation is possible. Then one begins to
study the examples partly for the quality of their
tonality, partly for the degree in which they embody the
character and spirit of the landscape, and partly, and
probably chiefly, for the quality of the artist's person-
ality infused into them. ^-.

cm]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

EEMBRANDT

Rembrandt was a master of both landscape motives,
able alike to record with truthfulness the physical aspects
of a scene or to infuse it with romantic suggestion ; and
nowhere more remarkably than in his etchings. In
these, with a few lines that summarize the salient features
of the scene, or with tonal effects of light and shade that
elaborate and em-ich the facts, he executed plates of
pure landscape or of landscape as a setting for the
figures. Among his paintings the examples of pure
landscape are rare. The beautiful Tohit and the Angel
of the National Gallery may be considered one, as the
figures are insignificant, and another, which, however, is
a sea-piece, is in the Liechtenstein Gallery (No. 606) :
water, dotted with a boat and a few distant sails, stretch-
ing back to a low horizon, over which spreads a vast open
creamy sky, with some finely buoyant clouds. It is as a
setting to figures, especially in the Biblical subjects, that
Rembrandt's use of landscape may best be studied. Here
it serves as an orchestration to the theme, enriching it
with sensuous and emotional suggestion, and giving a free
range to the artist's romantic and dramatic imagination.

PHILIPS KONINCK

Rembrandt's best-known pupil in landscape was Philips
Koninck, who was born in Amsterdam, 1619, and died
there in 1688, some of his career being spent abroad.

cm:]

f

LANDSCAPE

The character of his work suggests that he, too, may-
have been influenced directly by Hercules Seghers, for
he affected far-reaching panoramas of flat country, in-
terrupted by occasional low hills and traversed by
streams. A fine sky extends above the ground, which is
constructed in tones of warm pale yellow, olive green,
and reddish brown. Notwithstanding the comparatively
large size of the canvases and the extent of the scene
included, the latter has been felt so sjTithetically, as well
as comprehensively, that there is no lack of unity. An
excellent ^example is The Dunes, "The Valley of the
Rhine near Arnheim," owned by Sir William van
Home of ^Montreal. Another memorable example is in
the Dresden Gallery, Dutch Landscape, a view from the
dunes looking -across the level country. This canvas is
scarcely so large, but involves the same sense of bigness.
The foreground, which shows some red-roofed cottages
amidst the olive greens, is constructed in an ample way ;
a river occupies the middle distance, and the further
plain is dotted with httle trees. Overhead is a sky of
drabbish gray and rosy cream. The Berlin ]\Iuseum
owns a handsome example with figure and cattle in the
foreground, and the Rijks Museum contains two. Here
also are to be seen four portraits by Koninck of Joost
van den Vondel, two at the age of seventy-eight and two
at eighty-seven; the subject evidently being a friend of
the artist, for on the back of one of the pictures is a dedi-
catory inscription.

The great nursery of Holland landscape was the city of

Haarlem. Van Goyen, it is true, belonged to Leyden,

CITS]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

while Amsterdam, which produced Seghers and Koninck,
in course of time claimed many others. But the majority
were citizens of Haarlem or at least spent a portion of
their working life in that city. They include Salomon
van Ruisdael and his nephew Jacob ; Pieter Molyn, Jan
Wynants, Allart van Everdingen, and the painters
of landscape with animals and figures, Philips Wou-
werman, Adriaen van de Velde, and Nicolaes Berchem.

Salomon van Ruisdael (about 1600-1670), it has
been conjectured, may have been a pupil of Van Goyen's
because of a similarity between the early work of both,
that has lead to their pictures being attributed to each
other. But later the similarity disappears, Van Goyen
displaying an ampler and more poetic style, while Salo-
mon van Ruisdael continues to be the industrious painter
of landscapes that, while admirably faithful to the ap-
pearance of nature, are comparatively prosaic in feeling.
While he was a member of the Guild of St. Luke in
Haarlem and lived there continuously, he visited other
cities, for some of his pictures exhibit views of Leyden,
Dordrecht, and Nimwegen. The characteristic of his
work is a quiet, homely dignity, that, while it gives a
pleasant record of the Holland of his day, seldom stirs
one to enthusiasm. Perhaps his chief claim to recogni-
tion is that he was the teacher of Jacob van Ruisdael.

Pieter Molyn (about 1600-1661) was a successful
teacher, who had the capacity to foster the individuality
of his pupils. Among these the most famous was Gerard

cm]

1!

LANDSCAPE

Terborch, who occasionally collaborated with his master
by introducing figures into his landscapes. Molyn's own
pictures were inclined to be meager in composition, and
dryly precise in execution.

Jan Wynants (about 1605-1679), again, was fortu-
nate in having a collaborator, for more than one hundred
and fifty of his pictures were enlivened with figures by
that skilful and attractive artist, Adriaen van de Velde.
They add brilliance and animation to landscapes that in
themselves are painstaking but apt to be monotonous.

Allaet van Everdingen (1621-1675) is not to be con-
founded with his brother Cassar, who was a rather indif-
ferent painter of portraits, genre and historical pictures.
Allart was a pupil of Pieter Molyn and then worked in
Sweden, subsequently spending seven years in Haarlem
and the last twenty-two years of liis life in Amsterdam.
His fame also rests on his connection with Jacob van
Ruisdael, who was induced by the success of Everdin-
gen's Swedish landscapes to abandon the direct study of
nature and to invent scenes of romantic impressiveness.
In the Rijks Museum there is a chance, in Nos. 2078
and 907, to compare side by side the work of these two
men. The result, I think, is to discover that, while they
may use practically the same material in the same way,
Ruisdael gives a character to each object, that makes
you feel as if he had penetrated into the heart as well as
the marrow of the scene, while Everdingen remains
merely a lover and recorder of the picturesque.
[175]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

AERT VAN DER NEER

Van DER Neer was born in Gorkum in 1603, and died in
poverty at Amsterdam in 1677. In his youth he was
steward in the family of the- Van Arkels, and at this time
only occasionally indulged his love of painting. Later
he devoted himself to art, but found few purchasers for
his pictures and was continually harassed by creditors,
and at one time, like Jan Steen, kept a tavern. He is
distinguished particularly for his winter and moonlight
scenes, the best of which date from about 1646. They
exhibit not only a close study of nature but a poetic feel-
ing, which is deep and sincere and often very impressive.
He was a painter of moods, expressing the sentiment
usually in delicate tonalities, so delicate, indeed, that his
pictures, hidden away in the corners of galleries or con-
fronted with more robust pictures, seem at first monoto-
nous and cold. It is not until, as Bode points out, they
are isolated in a good light that their merit becomes ap-
parent. This famous expert also compares the method
of Van der Neer's moonlight scenes with that of Rem-
brandt's interiors. The latter projects a shaft of light
into the hollow gloom, while Van der Neer represents a
concavity of light, the luminosity of which is heightened
by the shadows. His method, in fact, is the exact reverse
of Renibrandt's.

Two memorable examples of his moonlight scenes ap-
pear in the Berlin Gallery, where one is impressively
somber, while the other is dramatically stirred by the
yellow and red flare and turbid smoke from a burning
D76 3

||

LANDSCAPE

house, and figures in movement agitate the foreground.
Others are in the National Gallery and in the Imperial
Art Museum at Vienna. The example in the latter
shows a darkened canal, with a boat, stretching back to
a town that broods beneath a sky in which the moon
rides at full, surrounded by fleecy clouds.

In the Vienna Gallery also is an example of one of his
winter scenes, others appearing in the National Gallery
and in the Wallace Collection. In these the artist in-
dulges in a freer and livelier use of color, though the ani-
mation of the ground and its group of figures does not
interfere with the delicate observation and sensitive feel-
ing, that still regulate his treatment of the skies. It is
on this that Van der Neer, like all painters of poetic
moods, relies chiefly for expression.

In one of Van der Neer's landscapes in the National
Gallery, cattle were painted by Cuyp. The reminder
may serve at this point of our story for an introduction
to the important part played in Holland landscape by
those artists who enlivened it with figures and animals.

LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES AND ANIMALS

The popularity of this branch of painting in the seven-
teenth century can be explained by its affinity to genre
painting. It is but a step from depicting a party of
people in an interior to showing them engaged in some
sport or occupation in the open air. The same tendency
to depict the incidents of Dutch life, or to use such
incidents as the theme of a pictorial presentation, ap-
13 [-177';]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

pears in both ; and some of the artists of this out-of-door
genre, Wouwerman, Adriaen van de Velde, Cuyp, and
Berchem, reached proficiency that compares favorably
with the masterpieces of interior genre. As for the fond-
ness for depicting cattle, we may recollect how Troyon,
after visiting Holland, turned from pure landscape to
cattle studies, while every observant visitor to that coun-
try has enjoyed the spots of rich color which the grazing
herds make in the far stretches of green pasture. They
form one of the notable features of the Holland land-
scape, and it would have been surprising if the painters,
so intent on the study of their home surroundings, had
overlooked it. The signal member of this group of
painters is Paul Potter.

PAUL POTTER

Potter is the prodigy among Dutch artists. At the age
of twenty-two he produced a masterpiece that, despite
its shortcomings, has compelled the admiration of the
world. This is a work of trenchant, even brutal force,
while the majoritj'- of his work, especially in his later
years, wins by its charm of persuasiveness. He is per-
sonally known to us through the beautiful portrait by
Van der Heist. It was painted in the year of Potter's
death, and shows him a man of distinguished mien, with
soft auburn hair curling upon his shoulders, and a face
that is marked by a high forehead, heav\^-lidded eyes, a
strong nose, and full, impulsive lips ; a face upon which
consimiption has set the impress of fell refinement.

[178:]

^1

LANDSCAPE

The son of an obscure painter, Potter was born at
Enkhuizen in 1625. From '164<6 to 1648 he resided at
Delft, where his masterpiece. The Young Bull of the
Hague Gallery, was painted. In 1649 he moved to The
Hague and married the daughter of an architect, Adri-
ana Balckeneijnde. In 1652 he moved to Amsterdam
and continued to reside there until his death in 1654.

The Young Bull is an amazing achievement of self-
discipline and almost passionate pursuit of truth. It
suggests the attitude of the painter to have been that
once and for all he would master the creature's appear-
ance. He set himself a great task of prolonged endur-
ance and has carried it through to an extraordinary
realization. The character of the beast, as it shows itself
to the eye; the incidents of its form and carriage; the
glossy pelt with its actual surface of hair, the brilliant
eye, the damp nozzle— every detail is of life. Having
completed this study, which established for himself
the knowledge and skill he had sought and became
a model for the instruction of other artists, he filled
in the rest of the canvas in a somewhat perfunctory
manner. The sky has good quality, but remains a
background in the rear of the composition; the in-
termediate landscape, overspread effectively with a
pale light, does not maintain its proper plane. The
beasts in the foreground are as hard as wood, the de-
tails of the tree niggling, and the figure of the man ill
drawn and tamely comprehended. In fact, it is not as a
picture that the canvas is remarkable, but for its con-
summately realistic treatment of the one overpowering
detail.

[179]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Other large canvases, also products of the artist's ex-
treme youth, are the Bear Hunt of the Rijks ^luseum
and the Boar Hunt in the Carstanjen Collection of the
Berhn Gallery. They are open to the same general
criticism, without the wonderful exception. They are
evidences of a young man's exuberant indiscretion,
though he was probably induced to it by the high value
that clients set upon such pictures. ^leanwhile, as early
as 1646, that is to say, when he was twenty-one, he was
settling down to the smaller pictures, artistically felt and
rendered, that mark the end of his career. One of the
earliest of these, dated 1648, is the scene of Cattle and
Bathers, in the Hague Gallery ; finely composed and full
of happy observation of country life, but somewhat hard
in texture. Yet the previous year had produced the
Horses at the Door of a Cottage of the Louvre, where
the scene is enveloped in the soft half-light of a glo^ving
evening sky. Another beautiful evening scene is Land-
scape with Cattle of the National Gallery.

PHILIPS WOUWERMAN

This charmingly original and versatile artist, whose
works abound in public and private collections, was born
in Haarlem in 1619 and died there in 1668. He studied
landscape with Jan Wynants, but the teacher who set
the tenor of his career was Frans Hals. It was from the
latter that he derived his skill in handling figures, com-
posing them in groups, placing them in space, and ren-
[180]

LANDSCAPE

dering them with fluency and vitality of brushwork:
and the principles thus acquired were applied by him
also to the treatment of the landscape. On his own part
he brought to his work a singularlj^ alert observation,
that was happy in hitting upon the fugitive and acci-
dental aspects of a scene, and a fancy that invests his
subject with a lyrical grace.

His fecundity was such that it is estimated he left
some seven hundred examples, which may be divided
into those of his early period, which extended through
the forties, and those of his maturity, which belong to the
fifties and early sixties. He was brought up during the
vicissitudes of the Thirty Years' War, and the impres-
sions of soldiering suggested many of his subjects of
cavalry, skirmishing, on the march, or halting at an inn.
Elsewhere it is hunting parties, riding parties, gay cav-
alcades of ladies and gentlemen; then, again, scenes of
farming life: the bringing home of hay, watering of
horses, scenes in the smithy— an inexhaustible array of
incidents in which figure men and women and their
friends, the horse and dog. With such unusual produc-
tivity it is not strange that some of his pictures suffered
by haste of execution. This is especially ti-ue of his
latest pictures, where the shadows have come through
and destroyed the brilliance of the colors. For, though
Wouwerman was not a colorist, he was an adept at sug-
gesting the gaiety of color, and his best pictures are bou-
quets of animated brilliance.

nisi:

i

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

AELBERT CUYP

Son of a prosperous portrait-painter of Dordrecht,
Aelbert Cuyp enjoyed ample means, married a widow,
rich and well connected, was highly esteemed and held
public offices in his own community, and throughout the
eighteenth century continued to be prized by collectors
as the "Dutch Claude." The result was that he could
paint to please himself. It is true that occasionally he
was persuaded to paint portraits of his wife's aristocratic
connections, some on horseback, but these less character-
istic pictures are exceptions. Living far from the cen-
ters of artists, he was devoted to country life, making
visits occasionally along the ^laas to Nimwegen or up
the Rhine as far as Bergen, but for the most part indulg-
ing his love of nature in the neighborhood around his
native city. The happiness of the man and the artist's
joy in the life of simple things— his ample means
made possible the simple life — are reflected in the sunni-
ness of his landscapes, and in the big, lazy, comfortable
kine that graze and bask and chew the cud beside slowly
moving waters in the neighborhood of pleasant home-
steads, steeped in the warmth of sunshine. "Only in his
own home on the lower Maas," Avrites the modern artist,
Jan Veth, himself a native of Dordrecht, "only near
Dordrecht, could he find this happy country, where a
delicate vapor from the rich marshy lands lies over the
meadows, which in the morning and evening hours are
covered with a peculiar golden veil."

His best pictures are in private collections in England
and Paris and in the National Gallery, the Wallace Col-

LANDSCAPE

lection, and the galleries of St. Petersburg and Buda-
pest. They number nearly fifty that can be regarded
as- masterpieces. On the other hand, the pictures by
which he is represented in many galleries will disappoint
the student who has formed a high expectation of this
artist's merit. For he was as unequal in his manner as
he was varied in his choice of subjects, which, besides
landscape and portraiture, included also genre, still-life,
church interiors, and historical paintings.

He was born in Dordrecht in 1620 and died there in
1691. Besides the instruction that he received from his
father, he is supposed to have been influenced by Van
Goyen, for his early work shows a recollection of the
latter's grayish tones.

ADRIAEN VAN DE VELDE

In the Rijks Museum is a portrait by Adriaen van de
Velde that represents himself and his family. In a coun-
try spot they have alighted from their carriage, and
while a groom attends to the handsome horses, the artist
and his young wife, a little child, and a nurse with the
baby in her arms are grouped' in the road. The artist
is of refined and gracious mien, while the spirit of the
whole scene breathes prosperity and happiness. The
portrait is indicative of his art, of the gracious fresh-
ness, joyousness, and sweet tranquillity that character-
ize his landscapes. For, though he painted some Biblical
and historical subjects, hrs true metier was landscape,
with the ingratiating addition of groups of figures and
animals. So highly appreciated was his gift of treating
[11833

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

these groups that many of the landscape artists of Am-
sterdam employed him to introduce them into their pic-
tures. Hobbema was among the number, as may be seen
in that artist's picture, The Water Mill, owned by Mr.
J. Pierpont ISIorgan, where the cow and the figures of
the man and woman are by Van de Velde.

Born in Amsterdam in 1636, Adriaen belonged to the
Van de Velde family of artists, his earliest teacher being
his father, the naval painter, Willem the Elder. Then
he studied with Jan W\Tiants at Haarlem and later with
Philips Wouwerman. He was also influenced by Potter
and Nicolaes Berchem, perhaps gaining from the latter
his occasional fondness for the Italianized kind of land-
scape. But this is mere supposition.

Even Berchem (1620-1683) is only supposed to have
visited Italy, because of the character of the subjects he
represented. All that is definitely known about him is
that he resided in Haarlem and Amsterdam. His treat-
ment, however, of the Italianized landscape, with its
goats and cows and peasants, is inferior to the art of
Van de Velde. It charms at first by its sunny pictur-
esqueness ; but it is discovered by degrees to be a product
of routine and mannerism. A studied affectation be-
comes apparent in the arrangement of the groups, and
a monotonous reiteration of the effects of light: some
object always placed near the center to catch the chief
illumination, while a corresponding formality is re-
peated again and again in the distribution of the light
and shade.

But such mechanics of picture-making never occur in
Van de Velde's landscapes. There is always a freshness
[184]

\\

LANDSCAPE

of vision, characterized, moreover, by delicate observa-
tion, that puts him on a par with Wouwerman, though
the sentiment of his pictures is his own.

THE NAVAL AND MARINE PAINTERS

It has already been remarked that the naval and marine
pictures are an exception to the general rule that Dutch
l^ainting reflects nothing of the war and the turbulence
of the times. The headquarters of the craft was naturally
the great shipping and commercial center, Amsterdam.
Here in the early part of the seventeenth century lived
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom. Born in Haarlem in 1566,
he had, previously to his settling down in the Dutch capi-
tal, visited France, England, and Italj^ while there is
good reason to believe that shipwreck had increased his
experiences by enforced sojourn on the west coast of
Africa. He makes a brave showing in the Rijks Mu-
seum with records of Dutch vessels running down
Spanish galleys and a sea-fight on the Haarlem ^leer,
and always his signature appears proudly on a pennon
at the masthead of a winning ship.

Simon de Vlieger, a native of Rotterdam, where he
was born in 1693, is another painter of stirring sea-
fights, though he also represents the peaceful, side of
shipping; witness A River Scene, in the Rijks Museum,
where a big-sailed merchantman from the Indies lies
near some little boats on the wind-flecked water, a pic-
ture full of bracing suggestion.

Lieve Verschuier (1630-1686), also a native of Rot-
[185]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

terdam, could present with vigorous effect the busy as-
pect of the harbor, as may be seen at the Rijks Museum
in his Charles II Entering Rotterdam, 24 May, 1660.

But the greatest of this stalwart group were Willem
van de Velde the Elder, and his son, Willem the
Younger. Both were born in Leyden, the former in
1611, the younger in 1633, and, after a period in Am-
sterdam, settled in England, where the father died in
London, 1693, and the son at Greenwich, in 1707. The
characteristic of these men is their treatment of the ship-
ping ; for with them, as with the others, the shipping and
the sky are of more concern than the water. They give
the great galleons and bulky Indiamen the personality
almost of sentient things : creatures of power and impor-
tance, swelling with the pride of consequence.

Cise]

CHAPTER XI

VAN GOYEN AND HOBBEMA

THE greatest name in Holland landscape, second
only to Rembrandt, as many believe, in Dutch
art, is Jacob van Ruisd-ael. Of the comparative
merits of the other two leaders of Dutch landscape, opin-
ions may differ; but personally I give the palm to Van
Goyen.

Jan Josephsz van Goyen, to give his full name, was
born in Leyden, in 1576. He was the pupil of several
teachers, including Esaias van de Velde. At about the
age of twenty-one he made a journey to France in the
company of one of his teachers. Later he visited Bel-
gium and the northern part of France, the sketches of
this trip being still preserved in the Print Collection of
Dresden. Moreover, from the subjects of his pictures,
it is evident that he traveled extensively in Holland.
Toward 1634 he settled at The Hague, continuing to
work there until his death in 1656. His pictures found
ready sale, but he speculated unfortunately in houses
and pictures and was a victim of that Dutch "South Sea
Bubble," the speculative mania in tulips. Consequently
he died poor.

His work embraces three manners. The first, which

lasted until about 1630, shows a tendency to brown, with

highly colored figures in which notes of red predominate.

This is the period of Esaias van de Velde's influence. In

iriSTl

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

the second period he begins to be himself; the color be-
comes more subdued, the skies more clear, and the tonal-
ity mingles grayness with the browns or becomes green-
ish. This .lasts for some years, and then gradually a finer
sense of picturesqueness regulates the compositions ; the
technique gains in breadth and authority; the tonality
is attained almost without color.

An example of the early method is View of Dor-
drecht, in the Hague Gallery. The town is seen in the
distance across an expanse of water, furred by the wind;
in the left foreground, the harbor bank with figures and
horses; a sail-boat scudding toward the right. It is a
gray day, translated into tones of brown ; an exquisitely
impressionistic vision of the occasion and scene.

A very remarkable picture of the transition stage be-
tween the first and second periods is the Landscape (No.
990) of the Rijks Museum, illustrated in this book. In
the coat of the man on the left the vivid spot of red ap-
pears ; his companion's coat is blue ; and these two notes
of color vibrate sharply against the drabbish lowering
sky. The ground is huffish green and the oaks brown.
It is a picture of extraordinary dramatic effect.

Two fine examj^les of the artist's middle and later
period are in the Berlin Gallery: View of Arnheim
(1646) and View of Nimwegen (1649). The former
shows a horseman in the foregroimd and a cart farther
back, where a gleam of light strikes, while the distant
town is in shadow; and above this striking contrast is a
magnificent height of sky filled with .light and scattered
with a few loose, well-constructed clouds. The tonality
is composed of cream, gray, brown, and green. The

Ciss;]

ii

VAN GOYEN AND HOBBEMA

later example already shows the prevalence of brown.
The architecture is constructed in tones of pale brown
and buff; the water in front is grayish white, and the
ample sky admits a little rose amid the grayish blue. It
is a picture of large feeling, and yet the details are still
drawn in with that wriggling stroke of the brown brush
which characterizes Van Goyen's work, especially in the
beginning and more or less to the end. It exhibits the
feeling of one who is an engraver, as indeed he was; it
is drawing rather than painting. The result is that some
of his pictures seem more than a trifle niggling in their
method. On the other hand, while he never gets away
from it, he gets the better of it. He continues to model
with these diminutive curlicues of vermicelli, now brown,
now green, but the method disappears in the big impres-
sion aroused by the ensemble. Other notable examples
of his later period are The River and Banks of a Canal,
in the Louvre.

But in the final analysis it is not the manner of an
artist that is of most account, but the quality of his ap-
peal. In the case of Van Goyen it is spirituel, not infre-
quently expressive of spirituality. Transmuted by his
vision, the corporeality of the scene has been dissolved
into a spiritual impression. It is, as it were, a mirage of
nature that is offered to one's imagination. Van Goyen
lacks at once the height and depth of Jacob van Ruis-
dael ; his moods are dreamy rather than poignant, and he
appeals where the other compels. But his moods are
those of a highly rarefied spirit, that seeks to* interpret
the bigness and the subtlety of what it feels by means
as abstract as possible.

cm]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

MEINDERT HOBBEMA

HoBBEMA is the very contrary to Van Goyen. A plain,
practical, matter-of-fact man, he is content to paint what
he sees, the objective appearances of the landscape,
viewed through the unimaginative medium of a healthy
naturalism. He was as little addicted to moods of feel-
ing as to dreams; neither curious for new experiences
nor moved to artistic ambition, for, having found a mo-
tive to his liking, he repeated it again and again with
slight variations. Gifted with a strong sense of form
and vnth an unusual faculty of representing it, he
learned from Jacob van Ruisdael to cultivate both, but
was too phlegmatic to receive inspiration from the mas-
ter's genius. Now and then he rose from his usual level
to a height of objective grandeur; but for the most part
was a prosy bourgeois, pottering round the parish.

He was born in 1638, his birthplace being variously
assigned to Haarlem, Koevorden, and the village of
^Middelharnis, though it may have been Amsterdam,
where he spent his life. At the age of thirty he married
a maid-servant four years his senior. She had been in a
well-to-do family, and through the influence of the latter
a place was found for Hobbema in the Wines-customs.
It was sufficient to keep him from actual w^ant, but the
fact did not spur him on to artistic effort. He painted,
ifwould seem, only when he "felt like it," which was not
often, for the number of his pictures is for a Dutch artist
inconsiderable. The earliest date on any of his pictures
is 1650; the last that can be assigned ^^ith certainty is
1670, for though it is generally accepted that the date
[190:

p

VAN GOYEN AND HOBBEMA

of The Avenue of Middclharnis, in the National Gal-
lery, is 1689, the "8" is scarcely decipherable. If this
date is accepted, it leaves the last twenty years of his
life, for he died in 1709, unproductive. No reason for
this is known, nor whether he retained his official posi-
tion; the only fact ascertained being that, like his great
master and so many other Dutch artists, he died in ex-
treme poverty.

Neglected by his own countr\Tnen, his best works
found their way into English private collections, from
which they are beginning to emerge into the hands of
American collectors: witness The Water Mill, known
as the "Trevor Landscape," and the Wooded Land-
scape, or "Holford Landscape," now owned by IMr. J.
Pierpont Morgan, and the Wooded Road, in the pos-
session of Mrs. William L. Elkins. Meanwhile Hob-
bema's masterpiece is The Avenue of Middelharnis, in
the National Gallery, while the Louvre also owns a fine
example in The Water Mill, and the popularity and
reputation which these works have so worthily ob-
tained has led to an overestimation of this artist's rank.
He has even been classed with Van Ruisdael. On the
evidence of The Avenue this is intelligible, but unfortu-
nately this picture is a unique example. The other pic-
tures mentioned above are also examples to stir enthu-
siasm, but they, too, are exceptional. You will not find
their equals anywhere in the galleries of Europe. On
the contrary, those which you do find are dryly objective
reiterations of oak-trees, water, mills, and houses, per-
functorily seen and rendered. They inspire little en-
thusiasm and weary b}^ repetition.

The Avenue, on the contrary, is an extraordinary in-
11191]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

stance of a moment's heightened vision of the facts,
boldly grasped and carried through unerringly to a
grand conclusion. Again, in the other pictures named,
especially in Mr. Morgan's The Water Mill, there is
evidence of something more than talent. A consummate
knowledge of forms, skill of compositional construction,
and ability to create an ensemble of tonality are here
reinforced by a comprehension of the feeling of the
scene, that has lifted it out of mere representation and
enhanced its significance. But unfortunately the talent,
transfigured in these examples, is, in the general run of
this artist's pictures, squandered; used without con-
science and permitted to drift into heartless mannerism.
The fact is that, judged by the final test of the quality
of the painter's mental and artistic attitude toward his
subject, the majority of Hobbema's pictures rank con-
siderably below par. It is such work as the generality of
his, which makes the student of Dutch art sometimes
pause in his wanderings through the galleries and ask
himself whether there is not a great deal of perfunctori-
ness and tedious iteration among these old masters of
Holland. There is, and the fact may as well be grasped
first as last. It is a school of great craftsmen, who some-
times worked indifferently, punctuated with a consider-
able number who rise conspicuously above their fellows,
but among these exceptions, save on rare occasions,
Hobbema is not to be reckoned.

1:1923

Si
<
<

CHAPTER XII

JACOB VAN RUISDAEL

THERE is a* tendency to identify Jacob van Riiis-
dael too exclusively with his pictures of moun-
tainous scenery and rocky waterfalls; hence to
speak of him as a romantic painter. But the true Ruis-
dael must be sought elsewhere. These romantic sub-
jects belong to his latest period, in the seventies,, when
the indifference shown by the public to his own manner
had induced him to imitate that of Everdingen's Swed-
ish landscape, and of the pictures of Swiss scenery by
Roghman and Hackaert. How superior he was to
Everdingen, we have already noticed^ in comparing the
examples of these two men that hang close together in
the INIunich Pinakothek. Ruisdael's knowledge of and
feeling for form, his power of construction not only of
the details but also of the ensemble, his mastery of sky
and cloud effects, and, above all, his individual and pow-
erful personality combine to produce in these scenes of
wild solitude with their plunging cataracts a suggestion
as of great organ music, beside which Everdingen's pic-
tures have only the tinkle of pictui'esqueness. Yet while
Ruisdael, as was to be expected, was superior to Ever-
dingen, he is in these pictui'es inferior to himself. That
his health was failing may possibly account for it; that

^See page 175.

" [;i93]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

he painted on dark grounds and the black has in many
cases come through and dulled the resonance of the col-
ors, overdarkening the shadows, is another reason; but
the chief one is to be found in his changed attitude. He
was no longer drawing his inspiration direct from na-
ture itself.

The finer examples of his latest style, such as the
Landscape with Waterfall of the National Gallery, still
exhibit his power in rendering the movement and the
mass of water, while others are impregnated with that
solitary grandeur which was a characteristic quality of
his genius. But it is in these instances touched with
moroseness, with something possibly of the sentimental
sorrows of a Werther. The great artist, whose lonely
bachelor life had been spent in meditating upon the big-
ness of nature, was now brooding over the littleness of
the world's appreciation of himself; introspection had
taken the place of that large looking out upon the world
which hitherto had been the habit of his life. These ro-
mantic subjects, in fact, represent the waning of his
powers; for the complete revelation of his genius we
must look elsewhere, beyond the invented landscapes, to
those in which nature itself has inspired the mood which
dominates its interpretation.

Meanwhile let us glance at the brief facts of the ar-
tist's life. He was born in Haarlem, in 1628 or 1629,
the son of a picture-frame maker, and nephew of Salo-
mon van 'Kuisdael, who was probably his teacher. At
about the age of twenty he was enrolled in the Haarlem
Guild of St, Luke. Some years later he settled in Am-
sterdam and was admitted to the rights of citizenship.
1:194:

JACOB VAN RUISDAEL

Among his pupils at this period was INIeindert Hob-
bema. At the age of fifty-three he returned to his native
city, broken in health and without means of subsistence,
and through the intervention of some friends of the
JNIennonite faith was given refuge in the poorhouse.
Here he lingered a few months and died in 1682, one
more example among so many in the story of Dutch
painting of an artist dying in poverty. This is the ugly
side of the storj^ In telling it we have tried to do justice
to the part played by the young republic, out of whose
hard-Avon nationality a great school of artists grew ; but
at the same time we have not overlooked the quick deca-
dence of national and social spirit that followed upon
the attainment of political liberty. And of this sapping
of the morality of the people the indifference paid to
her great artists was not the least notable symptom.

Ruisdael's youth and the prime of his manhood were
spent in studying the wooded dunes, open country, sea-
shore, and large stretches of water in the neighborhood
of Haarlem and Amsterdam. These supplied the sub-
jects for his finest and most characteristic pictures, while
others suggest that he traveled in different parts of Hol-
land and even penetrated into the neighboring German
principality of JNIiinster, a hilly country with forests and
old castles: witness Castle Bentheim of the Dresden
Gallery. The dated pictures are comparatively rare and
belong chiefly to Ruisdael's earliest period, but it is pos-
sible to assign approximate dates to many later ones
through examination of the figures which were intro-
duced by other artists. As Bode points out, those to
which Adriaen van Ostade, Nicolaes Berchem, and

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

Wouwerman contributed may with much probabiHty be
assigned to the Haarlem period, which terminated about
1655; on the other hand, when, among the Amsterdam
artists, Adriaen van de Velde was his collaborator, the
picture must antedate that artist's death in 1672.

Like all the greatest artists of landscape, Ruisdael
was a close student of form, his drawings and etchings
being often so conscientious in treatment as to suggest
that he was something of a botanist. At any rate, few
men have shown a more thorough knowledge of trees,
their character of bulk and build, their branch-growths
and manner of leafage, while the same constructive sense
appears in his delineation of ground, rocks, water, and
in that final test of great landscape-painting, the com-
prehension and rendering of skies. In his earlier work
this preoccupation with form results in an excess of de-
tail and a considerable tightness and hardness of method,
as may be observed in the little Village in the Wood of
the Dresden Gallery.

Later his works acquire breadth; details are treated
more freely and are less obtrusive; the feeling for en-
semble is more complete. And corresponding with this
ampler motive is a clearer eye for the local colors, a
richer and fuller tonality. Then, by degrees, the true
Ruisdael discovers himself. As we know him in the
finest works of the Amsterdam period, his genius is de-
clared in the amplitude of his conception of nature. We
are in the presence of one who has comprehended the
vastness of its suggestion, and entered into it, merging
therein the pettiness of personaUty. At these great mo-
ments it would be hard to mention a landscape-painter
i:i96]

JACOB VAN RUISDAEL

whose outlook is larger, freer, and more impersonal than
Ruisdael's, whose attitude is more truly epic; usually
with an ample expression of serene benignity, but, even
when there is stir of conflict, with an all-embracing
vision that merges the accidental in the universal.

In the attainment of this magnificent composure it
is the skies that play the greatest part. They occupy a
large, often the larger, portion of the canvas. They are
not only expanses of light, contrasted with the darker
tones of the ground, as in the case of most Holland land-
scapes, but are pervaded with vibrating atmosphere that,
while it penetrates to the front, seems to communicate
with endless space. To this element of universal sug-
gestion is added the stimulus of the poised or drifting
cloud-forms. They are not merely shapes of vapor, but
have bulk and weight and carrying power. They are to
the fluid mass of the sky what the wave is to the ocean :
a manifestation of its boundless energies. While to him
the ground and its forms of tree and rock or dune are
symbols of stability and static force, the sky is symbol of
dynamic energy unbounded. It is because Ruisdael thus
felt and could interpret the symbolism of nature that his
finest landscapes and marines create and maintain so
profound an impression.

Among the pictures prior to 1655 is View of Haarlem
from the Hill of Overveen, a subject by which Ruis-
dael seems to have trained and disciplined himself, for
he often repeated it. There are said to be twenty exam-
ples, some of which are in the galleries of The Hague
and Berlin, in the Rijks Museum, and used to be in-
cluded in the Holford and Kann collections. From the

cm]

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

elevation in the foreground one looks down and across
a stretch of level country, broken up with trees and
houses and a field where strips of linen are bleaching, to
the city, over which rises the mass of the Groote Kerk,
St. Bavon. But two thirds of the canvas is given to the
sky. The picture presents an elaborate study in the
art of ground- and sky-construction, in the difficult dif-
ferentiation of the planes of a level country, and in build-
ing the sky's volume and depth. Already there are dis-
tance and spaciousness, but as yet little expression, while,
in the case of the Berlin example especially, the tech-
nique is still a trifle hard and dry.

But, without attempting any chronological order,
turn to The Beach at the Hague Gallery, a replica of
which, Shore at Scheveningen, is in the National Gal-
lery, while there are others elsewhere. A cliff projects
on the right; otherwise the water, dotted with wading
figures and sail-boats, extends clear back from the front
to a low horizon, above which is a sky piled and scattered
with loose, buoyant clouds. There is wind in them, and
it ruffles the long reaches of waves that glide in over the
sand. Here is freedom not only of brushwork but of
imagination, which has been stirred by the sense of vast-
ness and of movement. The sea itself spreads far and
is alive with briskness, but in the endless distance of the
sky the clouds are moving grandly. This picture al-
ready gives the clue to Ruisdael's fully developed genius.
It prefigures his capacity to comprehend the big in na-
ture; to go out to it and mingle with it; to find it, not in
stupendous spectacles, but in the sense of vastness that
even familiar scenes may convey to one who realizes and

JACOB VAN RUISDAEL

feels the bigness in nature everywhere about us. For
compare The Mill near Wyh-hy-Duurstede , Ruisdael's
masterpiece in the Rijks Museum. Familiar enough in
Holland are the ingredients of this scene: gray water,
gray lowering sky, olive-green, brown, and pale-buff
ground and trees, a gleam of light on the body of the
mill; yet with what a majesty of conception they are
clothed! Everything is heightened and made poign-
antly compelling by a beautiful, tremendous dignity.

Nor was it only under aspects of stirring movement
that Ruisdael found bigness. He could find it in calm :
witness The Swamp in the Wood, in St. Petersburg, and
the Oah Wood of the Berlin Gallery. In front, pale
amber-green lily-pads, floating on depths of olive-green
water, in the mingled light and shade of rich, somber
golden-green and ruddy foliage; distant water and
dunes, and over all a sky in which balloons of clouds
hang drowsily. It recalls another masterpiece, this time
of the Imperial Art-History Museum, Vienna, The Big
Wood. Again a clump of oaks and a shattered silver
birch, massed high and wide against a sky of wonderful
luminosity. Everything is simplicity, itself , yet expresses
magisterial authority. The amplitude of conception on
this occasion has no trace of stress or poignancy, nor is
it one of calm; it is buoyant with a glorious joyousness.

Another remarkable example, heightened into gran-
deur by impulse of the imagination, is the Landscape
with Fence, in the Vienna Academy: a bit of sloping
ground vdth some wooden sheep-cotes and a willow. But
the light from a dull-gray slaty sky pales upon the wil-
low and gleams with a strange whiteness on the boards

THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING

of the fence. The picture, moreover, is painted with
unerring mastery of form and splendid fluency, which,
combined with its startHng arrangement of Hght, pro-
duces an effect of extraordinary impressiveness.

B}^ a method of hghting, somewhat similar, a mood
of profound and bitter melancholy has been interpreted
in The Jewish Cemetery of the Dresden Gallery. In
the murk of the distance a ruin glooms gauntly under
a heavy purplish slaty sky, where a faint rainbow shows
amid the turbid clouds. In the foreground a blasted
tree-trunk cuts white against a dull mass of trees; but
the brightest light, pallid and cold, is concentrated upon
one of a group of tombs. The stillness is broken by a
stream that shatters itself on the stones and rushes on.
Is this solemn picture an allegory of Ruisdael's o^vn
darkened life and its approaching end? Possibly, for his
signature, undated, appears upon a tombstone on the
left.

The examples quoted above are fairly representative
of an artist who handled the prose of nature with so
large a sense of its significance that he lifts it up to
poetry, of epic and occasionally tragic grandeur. For
Ruisdael, like Rembrandt, saw into the soul of facts.
That in a period of fifty years or thereabouts a school
of artists could be formed, wherein there are so many
excellent craftsmen, not a few masters of technique and
expression, and two great masters of the soul, is a mar-
velous record. Such was Holland's legacy of the seven-
teenth century to the civilization of the modern world.

1:200]

INDEX

INDEX

Abraham Receiving the Angels [Bol], 154

Actor's instinct in art, 75

Adoration of the Shepherds [Rembrandt],
103, 159

Aertz, Pieter, 19; studied at Amsterdam,
43

Albert, Archduke, 45

Altman, Mr. B., owner of The Sleeping
Girl [Vermeer], 136

Alva, Duke of, 22, 23, 46

Amsterdam, school of painting, 38, 43;
artists born there: Aertz, 107; Eeck-
hout, 158; De Keyser, 165; Koninck,
172 ; Adriaen van de Velde, 184 ;
school of: Scovel. 16; Rembrandt, 73;
Maes, 115; Metsu, 117; Fabritius,
157; Eeckhout, 158; De Gelder, 160;
De Keyser, 165: Koninck, 170; Hob-
bema, 190; residence of: Rembrandt,
76; Aertz, 107; Van Ostade, 109;
Lairesse, 125 ; De Keyser, 165 ;
Seghers, 170; Koninck, 170; Van der
Neer, 176: Potter, 179: Van de Velde,
Willem, Elder and Younger, 186; Van
de Velde, Adriaen, 184; Berchem,
184; Hobbema, 190; Ruisdael, Jacob,
194

Angel and the Shepherds [Flinck], 152

Antwerp, glory of, 7 ; "Image-Breaking"
at, 22 ; school of painting, 22 ; birth-
place of Hals, 50

Antwerp Museum, Day of Judgment [Van
Orley], 15

Art: the need of the people, 4; French
at time of Revolution, 5 ; imitation
death of national art, 6; decline of
Dutch in eighteenth century, 6 ; af-
fected by imperialism, influenced by
Church, 11 ; by Renaissance, 12 ; con-
dition at abdication of Charles V, 14;
realism of Dutch, 27; moral and scien-
tific character of, 28 ; commencement
of great period of, 29; still-life, 31;
portraiture, 49 ; beauty of inanimate
things, 59; democratic ideal of Dutch,
72 ; Rembrandt's compared to Greek,
72; actor's instinct shown by painters,
75 ; abstract in, 94 ; decorative, 94 ;
Barbizon, 171

Art-History Museum, Vienna. See Vienna

Artist in his Studio [Vermeer], 140

Asking a Blessing [Maes], 114

Asselyn, Jan, 44: Enraged Swan, The, 44

Avenue of Middelharnis [Hobbema], 191

B

Bakhuysen, Ludolf, 44

Balckeneijnde, Adriana, wife of Paul
Potter, 179

Bank of a Canal [Van Goyen], 188

Banquet of the Civic Guard [Van der
Heist], 164

Banquet of the Officers of the Archers of
St. Andrew [Hals], 66

Banquet of the Officers of the Archers of
St. George [Hals], 64

Banquet of the Officers of the Archers of
St. George [Hals], 65

Barbizon artists, 171

Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty, 87

Beach, The [.Tacob van Ruisdael], 198

Bear Hunt, The [Potter], 180

Bega, Cornelis, 110

"Beggars, The," 21

"Beggars of the Sea," 23

Berchem, Nicolaes, 30, 39, 43, 174. 178,
184, 195

Berlaymont, 21

Berlin: pictures in gallery: St. Jerome in
a Cave, Rembrandt, 76; Portrait of
Himself, Rembrandt, 78; Portrait of
Rendrickje Staff eU, Rembrandt, 89;
Old Woman Peeling Apples, Maes,
115; Portrait of Old Woman, Metsu,
118; Family Geelvink, Metsu, 120;
The Mother, De Hooch, 121; The Con-
cert, Terborch, 130; Diana with her
Nymphs, Vermeer, 135 ; Lady with a
Pearl Necklace, Vermeer, 138; The
Christening Party. Steen, 146; Por-
trait of a Young Woman, Flinck, 153 ;
A Man Praying, Fabritius, 158; Rais-
ing of Jairus's Daughter, Presentation
of Christ in the Temple, Mercury and
Argus, Eeckhout, 159; Old Lady and
her Daughters, Old Man and his Sons,
De Keyser, 166 ; Landscape and Cat-
tle, Koninck, 173; Boar Hunt, Potter,
180; View of Arnheim, View of Nim-
icegen. Van Goyen, 188; View of
Haarlem from the Dunes, Jacob van
Ruisdael, 197

Biblical pictures, 74, 103-105, 150; by
Steen, 148; Flinck, 151; Fabritius,
156: Bol, 163; Eeckhout, 158; De
Gelder, 160; Van de Velde, 183

Big Wood, The [Jacob van Ruisdael], 199

Blacksmith, The [Metsu], 117

Boar Hunt, The [Potter], 180

Bode, W., quoted, 54,114,117,134,176-195

[203]

INDEX

Bol, Ferdinand, 30; school, 43; apprecia-
tion, 153; Jacob Presented to Pharaoh,
Rest of the Holy Family, Abraham Re-
ceiving the Angels, Salome Dancing
before Herod, 154; Portrait of a Girl,
Portraits in the Pinakothek, 155

Boston Museum, pictures in: An Interior,
De Hooch, 122

Both, Johannes, 30

Boucher, 5

Bray, Jan de, 19

Bray, Salomon de, 39, 167

Brederode, feast at, 21

Bredius, Dr., 136; estimate of Steen, 142

Brueghel, Pieter the Elder, 107

Brunswick Gallery, pictures in: The Co-
quette, Vermeer, 140; Portrait. E'eck-
hout, 160; Oak Wood, Jacob van
Ruisdael, 199

Brussels, scene of abdication of Charles
V, 7; ancient grandeur of, 7; treaty of
1577 signed at, 23

Budapest, Fine Arts Museum, pictures in :
Portrait of a Man. Maes, 116; Portrait
of a Lady. Vermeer, 141; Esther and
Mordecai. De Gelder, 161; Portrait of
a Woman, De Keyser, 166; Portrait
of a Young Lady, Moreelse, 168;
Landscape. Guyp, 183

Burial, The [Rembrandt], 103

Cassel Gallery, picture in: Twelfth Night,

Steen, 146
Castle Bentheim [Jacob van Ruisdael],

195
Cattle and Bathers [Potter], 186
Cavalier in a Shop [Van Mieris], 124
Charles V, abdication, 3-8: birth and

education, 7 ; rule in the Netherlands, 7
Chiaroscuro, Rembrandt's, 79
Christ with the Doctors [Eeckhout], 159
Christening Party, The [Steen], 146
Church, influence of, on art, 11; attempt

to fasten Catholic on Holland, 20;

schism in Protestant. 37
Codde, Pieter, 126
Concert, The [Terborch], 136
Cook, The [Vermeer], 137
Coquette, The [Vermeer], 139
Count of Orange, William, 8
Cradle, The [Maes], 115
Craftsmanship, Dutch love of, 32
Cuyp, Aelbert, 30, 178; appreciation, 182
Czernin Gallery, Vienna, pictures in: The

Artist in his Studio, Vermeer, 140;

The Company of Captain Cloeck, De

Keyser, 166

Descent from the Cross [Rembrandt], 103
Diana and her Nymphs [Vermeer], 135
Diana at her Toilet [Vermeer], 134
Disciples at Emmaus [Steen], 148
Doctor Visiting a Young Woman [Steen],

147
Doctor's Visit, The [Steen], 147
Dordrecht, School of, 38, 43; De Gelder,
160; Cuyp, 182; residence of Cujt),
Hoogstraten, 43 ; of De Gelder, Potter,
179
Dort, assembly of Estates, 23
Dou, Gerard," 30; school, 40; life, 111;
appreciation. 111; The Young Mother,
103; Old Woman Saying Grace, 103;
The Dropsical Woman. 112; Lady at
her Toilet. 112; Old Woman who has
Lo.ft her Thread, 112; Young Man and
Girl in a Cellar, 113; Night School,
113
Dresden Gallery: Old Woman who has
Lost her Thread, Dou, 112; Young
Man and Girl in a Cellar, Still-life,
Portrait of Himself, Dou. 113; Man
and Woman Selling Poultry, Lovers at
Breakfast, Metsu, 118: A Lady at her
Clavichord, Netscher, 125; Officer Writ-
ing a Letter, Lady Washing her
Hands, Terborch, 130; The Proposal,
Vermeer, 134; The Marriage at Cana,
The Expvhion of Hagar, Steen, 148;
David Handing the Letter to Uriah,
Flinck, 151; Jacob PreseyUed to Pha-
raoh, Bol, 153; Rest of the Holy Fam-
ily, Bol, 154; Presentation of Christ
in the Temple, An Important Docu-
ment, Portrait of a Halberdier, De
Gelder, 160; Dutch Landscape, Ko-
ninck, 173; Castle Bentheim, Jacob
van Ruisdael, 195; Village in the
Wood, Jacob van Ruisdael, 196;
Jewish Cemetery, Jacob van Ruisdael,
200
Dropsical Woman, The [Dou], 112
Dunes, Valley of the Rhine near Arnheim

[Koninck], 173
Diirer, Albrecht, 15
Dusart, Cornelis, 110

Dutch, pioneers of modern era, 3 ; inde-
pendence of, declared, 24; defeated
Spain by sea, 26; love of genre, 30,
31; advance in commerce, science,
agriculture, and the crafts, 36; politi-
cal and religious dissensions, 37; art
one of portraiture, 49; character of
genre, 107-109; change of conditions
of society, 124; society pictures, 126;
landscape, 170; with cattle, 177; oc-
casional tediousness of landscapes, 192
Dutch Courtyard [De Hooch], 122
Dutch Housewife [Maes], 115
Duyster, Willem Cornelisz, 121, 126

David Handing the Letter to Uriah
[Flinck], 151

Day of Judgment [Van Orley], 15

Decapitation of St. John the Baptist [Fa-
britius], 157

Delft, School of, 38, 41; born in: Ver-
meer. 132; studied at: Vermeer, 132;
residence in : Vermeer, 132 ; Steen,
144; Pabritius, 156

Eeckhout, Gerbrandt van den, 30; school,
43, 151; life, 174; appreciation, 175;
The Woman Taken in Adultery, 158;
Christ with the Doctors, Raising of
Jairus's Daughter, Presentation of
Christ in the Temple, Mercury and
Argus, 159; The Wine Contract, 160

[204:]

INDEX

Egg Dance, The [Aertz], 107

Egmont, Count, 22, 46

Egmont, Maria van, 144

Elevation of the Cross [Rembrandt], 103,
104

Elias, Nicolaes, 165

Elizabeth of England assists Dutch, 25

Elkins, Mrs. William L., owner of Wooded
Road. Hobbema, 191

Elsheimer, German painter who influenced
Rembrandt, 74

Enraged Swan, The [Jan Asselyn], 44

Esther and Mordecai [De Gelder], 161

Etchings of Rembrandt, 74: Old Woman's
Head: Bust of Old Woman: Rem-
brandt, a Bust; Rembrandt with an
Open Mouth ; Rembrandt with an Air
of Grimace: Rembrandt with Haggard
Eyes; Rembrandt Laughing

Everdingen, Allart van, 30; school, 39;
paints in Sweden, 39; in Amsterdam,
43

Everdingen, Csesar van, 175

Expulsion of Hagar [Steen], 148

Fabritius, Carel, 30: school. 41; in Am-
sterdam, 43; teacher of Vermeer, 132;
Biblical subjects, 150; appreciation,
156: tragic death, 157; Portrait of
Abraham de Notte, 157; The Decapi-
tation of St. John the Baptist, 157

Family Geelvink [Metsu]j 120

Family Group [De Hooch], 122

Feast of St. Nicholas [Steen], 145

Fete of the Civic Guard, Munster, 1648
[Flinckl, 153

Fiddler, The [Van Ostade], 110

Fishers for Souls, The [Van de Venne],
44

Flanders, School of, 100, 107

Flemish nobles aid Holland, 21

Flinck, Covert, 30; school, 43; Biblical
pictures. 150; appreciation, 151; Isaac
Blessing Jacob, David Handing the
Letter to Uriah, 151; Angel and the
Shepherds, Gray-Bearded Man, 152;
Portrait of a Little Girl, of a Young
Woman, of M. Johannes Wittenbo-
gaert. Fete of the Civic Guard, Mun-
ster, 153

Fragonard, 5

Frederick Henry, Stadtholder, 37, 45

Frick, Henry C, owner of The Music
Lesson, Vermeer, 140

Fromentin, quoted, 6, 49; on Rembrandt,
78-85; Terborch, 129

Gallant Soldier, The [Terborch], 129
Gelder, Aert de, 151; appreciation of,
160; Presentation of Christ in the
Temple, An Important Document, Por-
trait of a Halberdier, 160; Jxidah and
Thamar, Esther and Mordecai, Three
Portraits. 161
Genre painting, 107; inspiration from
Hals, 100; high-water mark of, 120;
decline of, 124; society picture, 126;

of Terborch, 129; not realistic, 130;
Valckenborch, Aertz, 107; Van Ostade,
108; Dou. Ill; Maes, 114; Metsu,
117; De Hooch, 120; Willem and
Frans (Elder and Younger) van
Mieris, 122 ; Lairesse, Netscher, Schal-
cken, 125 ; Dirck Hals, Duyster, Pala-
medesz, Codde, Slingeland, 126; Ter-
borch, 127: Vermeer. 132; Steen, 141
Gerard, Balthasar, assassin of William of

Orange. 25
Ghent, birthplace of Charles V. 7
Girl before her Mirror [Van Mieris], 124
Girl with U'atcr-Jug [Vermeer], 134
Gorkum, 176

Goyen, Jan Joseph van, 19, 39, 40, 42,
173, 174, 183; life. 187; appreciation,
188; compared to Ruisdael, 189; Vieiu
of Dordrecht, of Arnheim, of Nim-
rve.fjen. Landscape, 188; The River,
Banks of a Canal, 189
Grand Pensionary, 47
Grange, Justus de la, employer of Pieter

de Hooch, 121
Gray-Bearded Man [Flinck], 152
Greek art compared to Rembrandt's, 72
Guild of St. Luke, the Painters' Guild, at
Delft, 121, 132; Haarlem, 51, 174,
194; Leyden, 111, 117, 144

H

Haarlem, school, 39, 50; Scovel, 16;
Hals, 50: Terborch, 127; De Bray,
167; Ruisdael, Salomon and Jacob,
174; Molyn, 174; Wynants, 174;
Everdingen, 174: Van de Velde,
174; Berchem, 174; birthplace of
Seghers, 170; Wouwerman. 180; Ruis-
dael, 194; residence of Hals, 51; Van
Ostade, 110; De Hooch, 121; De
Bray, 157; Seghers, 170; Van de
Velde, 174; Wouwerman, 180

Haarlem Municipal Museum, 32, 39, 52;
corporation pictures, Hals, 64: Ban-
gnet of the Officers of the Archers of
St. George, 64; Banquet of the Offi-
cers of the Archers of St. George, 65;
Banquet of the Officers of the Archers
of St. Andrew, 66; Reunion of the
Officers of the Archers of St. Andrew,
67; Officers of the Archers of St.
George, 68; Regents of the Hospital
for the Poor, 52 ; Regents of the Hos-
pital of St. Elizabeth, 69

Hague: Dutch independence declared, 24;
school, 38, 42; Ravesteyn. 167: Miere-
velt, 167: residence of De Hooch, 121;
Steen, 144; Seghers, 170; Potter, 179;
Van Goyen, 187

Hague Royal Museum, 37; Portrait of a
Young Man, St. Simeon in the Temple,
The Lesson in Anatomy, Rembrandt,
76: The Young Mother. Dou, 103;
Peasants' Holiday. Peasants at an Inn,
Marriage Proposal, The Fiddler. Van
Ostade, 110; Diana at her Toilet. Neia
Testament. Head of a Girl. Vermeer,
135: View of Delft. Vermeer, 136;
While the Old Ones Sing, etc., Steen,
146 ; Doctor Visiting a Sick Woman,

12052

INDEX

Steen, 147; Judah and Thamar, De
Gelder, 161; The Young Bull, Potter,
179; Cattle and Bathers, Potter, 180;
View of Dordrecht, Van Goyen, 188;
"View of Haarlem from the Dunes,
Jacob van Ruisdael, 197; The Beach,
Jacob van Ruisdael, 198

Hals, Dirck, 5; place in art, 126
Hals, Frans, 19; birth, 29; life, 50;
Guild of St. Luke, 51; death and
burial, 51; personal character, 52;
technique. 52 ; humor, 53 ; point of
view, 54; still-life, 57; compared with
Van der Heist, 57; an Impressionist,
59; use of values, 63; light, 63; brush-
work, 64; color, 64; simplicity of
gesture, 67; decline of power, 69;
Hals and Rembrandt, 96; modern in-
fluence, 97; overestimated, 97; pupils,
99; Banquet of the Officers of the
Archers of St. George, 64; Banquet of
the Officers of the Archers of St.
George, 65; Banquet of the Officers of
the Archers of St. Andrew, 66; Re-
union of the Officers of the Archers of
St. Andrew. 67; Officers of the Arch-
ers of St. George. 68; Regents of the
Hospital for the Poor, 52 ; Regents of
the Hospital of St. Elizabeth, 69

Hals, Harmen, 58

Happy Family, A [Steen], 145

Harmen van Rijn, father of Rembrandt,
73

Head and Bust of Oriental [Rembrandt],
104

Head of a Girl [Vermeer], 135

Heist, Bartholomeus van der, 43 ; com-
pared with Hals, 57; appreciation,
164; Banquet of the Civic Guard, 57,
164 ; Portrait of Paul Potter, 163, 178

Hendrickje, 78: Portrait of, 89

Hermanszoon, Anneke, 50

Heyden, Jan van der, 31

Hobbema, Meindert, 31, 39, 43; life, 190;
appreciation, 192; The Water Mill,
191, 192; Avenue of Middelharnis.
Wooded Landscape, Water-Mill

(Louvre), Wooded Road, 191

Holland, growth of, 3 ; pioneer of modern
era, 3; misrule of Philip, 19; inde-
pendence of, 24 ; birthplace of new
art, 26; Duchess Isabella, 45; consoli-
dated, 45 ; Stadtholdership hereditary,
46 ; familv of Orange entangled with
Stuarts, 47

Holy Familv [Rembrandt], 102

Homely Scene, A [Steen], 145

Hondecoeter, Melchior d', 31; school, 38;
in Amsterdam, 43

Hooch, Pieter de, 31; school, 41; in Am-
sterdam, 43; life, 120; influence of
other painters, 138; The Mother, In-
terior, The Pantry, A Dutch Court-
yard, Family Group, 122; The Visit,
138

Hoogstraten, Samuel van, 43

Horn, Count van, 22, 46

Horses at the Door of a Cottage [Potter],
180

Houbraken, historian -painter, 52, 120,
144

Huntington, Mrs. Collls P., owner of
Lady with a Lute, Vermeer, 139

r

Important Document, An [De Gelder], 160
Impressionism, 59, 60; of Rembrandt, 86.

92, 93
Interior [De Hooch], 122
Isaac Blessing Jacob [Flinck], 151
Isabella, Duchess, 45
Israels, Josef, 106

J

Jacob Presented to Pharaoh by Josech
[Bol], 154 -^ J *'

Jerome in a Cave, St. [Rembrandt], 76

Jesus Disputing with the Doctors [Rem-
brandt], 75

Jewish Cemetery [Jacob van Ruisdael],
200

Johnson, Mr. John G., collector of Phila-
delphia, 114

Judah and Thamar [De Gelder], 160

Judith with the Head of Holof ernes [Man-
tegna], 157

Kalf, Willem, 31

Keyser, Thomas de, 43; appreciation, 165;
Company of Captain Cloeck, Family
Meebeeck Cruywaghen, Portrait of
Pieter Schout. Old Lady and her Three
Daughters, Old Man and his Two
Sons, Portrait of a Woman, 166

Koninck, Philips, 30; in Amsterdam, 43,
174; appreciation. 172; The Dunes,
Valley of the Rhine near Arnheim,
Dutch Landscape, Landscape with
Cattle (Berlin), Landscape with Cat-
tle (Rijks), Four Portraits of Joost
van der. Vondel, 173

Lace-Maker, The [Vermeer], 139

Lady and her Doctor [Van Mieris], 124

Lady at a Spinet [Vermeer], 140

Lady at her Toilet [Dou], 112

Lady at the Clavichord [Netscher], 125

Lady Washing her Hands [Terborch], 136

Lady with a Lute [Vermeer], 139

Lady with the Pearl Necklace [Vermeer],

138
Lady Writing [Vermeer], 139
Lairesse, Gerard de, 125
Landscape, 169; painters of: Seghers,
169; Rembrandt, 173; Jacob van
Ruisdael, 173, 193 ; Salomon van
Ruisdael, 174; Molyn, 173; Berchem,
174; Wouwerman. 174, 180; "Wynants,
175; Van der Neer, 176; Van de
Velde, 183; with cattle, Potter, 179
Landscape with Cattle [Koninck], 173
Landscape with Cattle [Potter], 180
Landscape with Fence [Jacob van Ruis-
dael], 199
Landscape with Waterfall [Jacob van

Ruisdael], 194
Last Judgment [Van Leyden], 74
Lastman, Pieter, 73
League of Nobles, 21
Lesson in Anatomy [Rembrandt], 76

[:206 3

INDEX

Letter, The [Vermeer], 138

Leyden, founding of university, 35;
School of, 38, 40; Dou, 111;' Steen,
144; birthplace of Rembrandt, 73;
Dou, 111; Metsu, 117: Mieris, 122;
Steen, 144; Willem van de Vclde,
Elder and Younger, 18(5; Van Goyen,
187; residence of Rembrandt, 74;
Dou, 111 ; Steen, 144

Liberty, Statue of, 87

Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna: Portrait of a
Oirl. Bol, 155

Louvre: The Supper at Emmaus. The
Good Samaritan, Rembrandt, 82; The
Dropsical Woman. Dou, 112; Vege-
table Market. Metsu, 118; The Gallant
Soldier. Terborch, 129; Angel and the
Shepherds, Flinck, 152; Portrait of a
Little Girl. Flinck, 153; Portrait of a
Mathematician, Bol, 154; Horses at
the Door of a Cottage, Potter, 180;
The Rirer. Banks of a Canal. Van
Goyen, 189; Water Mill, Hobbema, 191
vers at Breakfast [Metsu], 118

Lucas van Leyden, 15, 74; The Last Judg-
ment, 74

Luminarist, 80

M

Maas, River, 182

Maes, Nicolaes, 31, 144; school, 43; in-
fluenced by Rembrandt, 105 ; life,
114; appreciation, 115; A Reverie,
Asking a Blessing, Nurse and Chil-
dren, 114; The Young Card-Players,
114, 116; Old Woman Peeling Apples,
The Cradle, Dutch Housewife. 115;
Old Woman Spinning, 115, 116; Por-
trait of a Man. 116

Man and Woman Selling Poultry [Metsu],

iWanet, Edouard, 60

Mantegna, Judith with the Head of Holo-
f ernes. 157

Marine-painters, 44; Vlieger, 44, 185;
Bakhuysen, 44; Verschuier, 185; Wil-
lem van de Velde, Elder and Younger,
44. Vroom. 185

Marriage at Cana [Steen], 148

Marriage Proposal, The [Van Ostade], 110

Matisse, French artist, 93

Maurice, Stadtholder, 37, 45

Mercury and Argus [Eeckhout], 159

Metropolitan Museum, New York, 88, 90;
A Music Party. Metsu, 119; Girl with
Water-Jug. Vermeer, 135

Metsu, Gabriel, 31; school, 40; in Am-
sterdam, 43; pupil of Hals, 99; in-
fluenced by Dou, 111; life, 117; ap-
preciation, 117-119; The Blacksmith,
117; Old Woman in Meditation, Man
and Woman Selling Poultry, Lovers at
Breakfast, 118; A Music Party, Visit
to the Nursery, 119; Family Geelvink,
120

Meyer, Baron A., photographs of, 58

Mierevelt, Michiel Jansz van, 19, 41, 167

Mieris, Frans van, the Elder, 40 ; influenced
by Dou, 111: life, 122; appreciation,
123; The Sick Woman. The Oyster
Breakfast, 123; The Girl before a

Mirror, A Lady and her Doctor, Cava-
lier in a Shop, 124

Mill near Wyk-by-Duurstede [Jacob van
Ruisdael], 199

Models, Rembrandt's use of, 104, 150

Monet, Claude, 60

Moral character of Dutch painting, 27

Moreelse, Paulus, 167

Morgan, Mr. J. Pierpont, owner of Visit
to the Nursery, Metsu, 119; Lady
Writing, The Lace-Maker, Vermeer,
139; The Water Mill, Hobbema, 184,
191; Wooded Landscape, Hobbema,
191

Moro, Antonio, 16

Mother, The [De Hooch], 122

Munich Pinakothek. See Pinakothek

Music Lesson, The [Vermeer], 140

N

National Gallery, London: Peace of MUn-
ster, Terborch, 39, 127; The Young
Card-Players. Maes, 114, 116; The
Cradle, Dutch Housewife, Maes, 115;
An Interior, De Hooch, 121; A Dutch
Courtyard, Family Group, De Hooch,
122 ; Lady at a Spinet, Vermeer, 140 ;
The Doctor's Visit, Steen, 147; The
Wine Contract, Eeckhout, 160; Tobit
and the Angel, Rembrandt, 172;
Moonlight Landscape, Landscape with
Trees, Landscape with Cattle, Van der
Neer, 177; Landscape with Cattle,
Potter, 180; Landscape with Cattle,
Cuyp, 182; Avenue of Middelharnis,
Hobbema, 191; Landscape with TTater-
fall, Jacob van Ruisdael, 194; Shore
at Scheveningen, Ruisdael, 198

Neer, Aert van der, 30 ; school, 43 ; ap-
preciation, 176; Moonlight Scenes, in
National Gallery and Imperial Art Mu-
seum, Vienna, 177; Winter Scene,
Scene with Cattle, 177

Netscher, Caspar, school, 42; apprecia-
tion, 125 ; A Lady at the Clavichord,
125

New Testament, The [Vermeer], 136

Night School, The [Dou], 113

Night Watch, The [Rembrandt], 77, 79,
81, 84

Nurse and Children [Maes], 114

Officer Writing a Letter [Terborch], 136
Old Lady and her Three Daughters [De

Keyser], 3 66
Old Man and his Two Sons [De Keyser],

166
Old Woman in Meditation [Metsu], 118
Old Woman Peeling Apples [Maes], 116
Old Woman Peeling Apples [Terborch],

136
Old Woman Saying Grace [Dou], 103
Old Woman Spinning [Maes], 114
Old Woman who has Lost her Thread

[Dou], 112
Orange, Prince William of, 23, 29, 46
Oriental art, 94
Oriental Figure [Rembrandt], 104

Csot:

INDEX

Orley, Barend van, 15 ; The Day of Judg-
ment, 15

Ostade, Adriaen van, 30; school, 39; pupil
of Hals, 99; life, 108; appreciation,
109; pupils, 110; The Peasants' Holi-
day, Peasants at an Inn, Marriage
Proposal, The Fiddler, 110

Ostade, Isaac van, 110

Oyster Breakfast, The [Mieris], 123

Presentation of Christ in the Temple [De

Gelder], 160
Presentation of Christ in the Temple [Eeck-

hout], 159
Presentation with the Angel [Rembrandt],

75
Prince's Birthday [Steen], 146
Proposal, The [Vermeer], 134

Palamedesz, Antonie, school, 41 ; apprecia-
tion, 126
Pantry, The [De Hooch], 122
Paul, St. [Rembrandt], 76
Peace of Miinster, 46
Peace of Miinster [Terborch], 39, 127
Peasants at an Inn [Van Ostade], 110
Peasants' Holiday [Van Ostade], 110
Petersburg, St., The Swamp in the Wood,

Jacob van Ruisdael, 199
Philip I, 3, 9, 10

Philip II: misrule of Netherlands, 19;
nobles resist, 21; ambition, 25; close
of. reign, 26
Pieter Schout, Portrait of [De Keyser], 166
Pinakothek, Munich: Holy Family, Rem-
brandt, 102 ; The Descent from the
Cross, The Elevation of the Cross,
Rembrandt, 103, 104; The Burial, The
Resurrection, Rembrandt, 103; The
Adoration of the Shepherds, Rem-
brandt, 104, 159; Old Woman Saying
Grace, Dou, 103; Lady at her Toilet,
Dou, 112; The Sick Woman, The
Oyster Breakfast, Van Mieris, 123 ;
Girl before a Mirror, Van Mieris, 124;
Portraits of Man and Wife, three
others, Bol, 155
Plein-air, 63, 131, 170, 171
Portrait of a Girl [Bol], 155
Portrait of a Little Girl [Flinck], 153
Portrait of a Man [Maes], 116
Portrait of a Woman [De Keyser], 160
Portrait of a Young Man [Flinck], 152
Portrait of A. de Notte [Fabritius], 157
Portrait of Elizabeth Bas [Rembrandt], 89
Portrait of Himself [Rembrandt], 78
Portrait of M. Johannes Wittenbogaert

[Flinck], 152
Portrait of Old Woman [Metsu], 118
Portrait of Paul Potter [Van der Heist],

178
Portraits, painters of, 33 : school of Haar-
lem, 39; Delft, 41; The Hague, 42;
Hals, 49; Rembrandt, 89; Maes, 116;
Terborch, 128; Vermeer, 141; Sant-
voort, 151, 161: Flinck, 151; Bol,
155; Fabritius, 156; Eeckhout, 160;
De Gelder, 160; Van der Heist, 162;
De Keyser, 165; Mierevelt, 167; Rave-
steyn, De Bray, Moreelse, 167
Portraits of Man ' and Wife, three other

portraits [Bol], 155"
Portraiture, 150

Potter, Paul, appreciation, 178; life, 179;
The Young Bull, 179; Bear Hunt,
Boar Hunt, Cattle and Bathers, Horses
at the Door of a Cottage, Landscape
with Cattle, 180
Pourbus, Pieter, 16

Raising of Jairus's Daughter [Eeckhout],
159

Ravesteyn, Jan Anthonisz van, 19; school,
42, 167

Regents of the Hospital for the Poor
[Hals], 52

Regents of the Hospital of St. Elizabeth
[Hals], 69

Rembrandt, Harmensz van Rijn, 71; indi-
tidualitv, 4; birth, 30; School of Ley-
den, 40; Amsterdam, 43: Holland's
leading painter, 49 : life, 72 ; etchings,
74: personality, 75; in Amsterdam,
76; beginning of fame, 77; marriage
and death of Saskia, second marriage,
77; bankruptcy, 78; Fromentin's criti-
cism, 79, 85 ; chiaroscuro, 80 ; abstract
idea, 88; color, 91; symbolism, 92; Im-
pressionist, 93 ; compared with Hals,
96; influence on genre, 102; use of the
arch, 104; St. Paul, St. Jerome in a
Cave, St. Simeon in the Temple. 76;
The Lesson in Anatomy, 76, 85 ; Sortie
of the Frans Banning Cock Company
(The Night Watch), 77, 79, 81, 84;
The Syndics of the Cloth Guild, 78;
Portrait of Himself, 78: Shipper at
Emmaus, 82, 148; Good Samaritan,
82; Portrait of Elizabeth Bas. 89;
Holy Family, 102 ; Descent from the
Cross. 103: Elevation of the Cross,
103, 104; Burial, Resurrection, Adora-
tion of the Shepherds, Oriental Figure,
Head and Bust of an Oriental, 104;
Tobit and the Angel, 172

Renaissance art, 72

Rest of the Holy Family [Bol], 154

Resurrection, The [Rembrandt], 104

Reunion of the Officers of the Archers of
St. Andrew [Hals], 66, 67

Reverie [Maes], 114

Reyniers, Lysbeth, 51

Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, 44, 59; The
Enraged Swan, Asselyn, 44; Fishers
for Souls. Van de Venne, 44 ; Syndics
of the Cloth Guild, Rembrandt, 78;
Sortie of the Frans Banning Cork
Company, Rembrandt, 78, 79, 81, 84;
Portrait of Elizabeth Bas, Rembrandt,
89: The Egg Dance, Aertz, 107; The
Night School, Dou, 113: A Reverie,
Metsu, 114; Asking a Blessing, Old
Woman Spinning, Metsu, 115, 116:
The Blacksmith. Metsu, 117; Old
Woman in Meditation, Metsu, 118;
The Interior, The Pantry, De Hooch,
122; The Cook, Vermeer, 137: Totmg
Woman Reading a Letter. Vermeer,
138; A Homely Scene, The Happy
Family, The Feast of St. Nicholas,
Steen, 145; The Prince's Birthday,

[208]

INDEX

The Sick Lady. Steen, 146; The Dis-
ciples at Emtnaits. Steen, 148; Isaac
Blessing Jacob, Flinek, 151: Portrait
of M. Johannes Wittenboffaert, Fete of
the Civic Guard, Miinster. 164S,
Flinek, 153; Abraham Receiving the
Angels, Salotne Dancing before Herod,
Bol, 154: iS'ix Governors of the Ilui.izit-
tenhuis, Four Governors of the Leper
House, Roelof Metilenaar, 2Iaria Rey.
Artus Quellinus. Bol, 156: Portrait of
Abraham de Notte, Decapitation of
St. John the Baptist. Pabritiiis, 157;
TTomnn Taken in Adult en/. Eeckhout,
158; Three Portraits, De Gelder. 161;
Portrait of Dirck Bas Jacnhsz Family,
Four Ladies of the Spinhuis, Sant-
voort, 161; Banquet of the Civic
Guard, Ynn der Heist, 57, 164; Por-
trait of Paul Potter, Van der Heist,
163; Company of Captain Clneck,
Family Meebeeck Cruyivaghen, Portrait
of Pieter Schout, De Kevser, 166;
Maria van Utrecht. The Little Prin-
cess, Moreelse, 167: Four Portraits of
Joo.it van den Vondel. Two Land-
scapes with Cattle. Koninck, 173;
Landscape. Everdingen, 175; The
Bear Hunt. Potter, 180; Portrait of
the Tan de Telde Fatyiily, Van de
Velde, 183; Charles II Entering Rot-
terdam, 24 May, 1660, Verschuier,
186; Landscape, Van Goyen, 188;
View of Haarlem from the Dunes,
Jacob van Ruisdael, 197; Mill near
Wyk-hy-Duurstede, Jacob van Ruis-
dael. 199

River [Van Goyen], 188

Rotterdam, birthplace of De Hooch, 120;
Mieger. 185 ; Verschuier, 185

Rubens, Peter Paul, 18

Ruisdael, Jacob van, compared to Goyen,
189; appreciation, 193; life, 194; in-
crease of power, 196 ; compared to
Rembrandt, 200; Landscape with
Waterfall, 194; Castle Bentheim. 195;
Village in the Wood. 196; View of
Haarlem from the Hill of Overveen,
197; The Beach. Shore at Schevenin-
gen, 198; The Mill near Wyk-by-Duur-
stede. The Swamp in the Wood. The
Oak Wood, The Big Wood, Landscape
with Fence, 199; Jewish Cemetery, 200

Ruisdael, Salomon van, 174

St. Simeon in the Temple [Rembrandt], 76

Salome Dancing before Herod [Bol], 151

Santvoort, Dirck Dircksz, 151; apprecia-
tion, 161 ; Portrait of Dirck Bas
Jacobsz Family, Four Ladies of the
Spinhuis, 161; Four Governors of the
Serge Hall, Frederick Dircksz Alewyn,
Agatha Geelvinck, Martinus Alewyn,
Clara Alewyn, 162

Saskia van Uylenborch, 77

Schalcken, Godfried, 42 ; influenced by
Dou, 111: appreciation, 125

Schatter, Captain Johan, 66

Scovel, Jan van, life, 16; appreciation.

17; portrait group of twelve Knights
Templars, 17

Seghers, Hercules, 19 ; born at Amster-
dam, 43; appreciation, 169; influenced
Koninck, 173, 174; Holland Landscape
irith the Hamlet of Rhenen, Landscape,
169

Shore at Scheveningen [Jacob van Ruis-
dael], 198

Sick Woman, The [Van Mieris], 123

Sidney, Sir Philip, 25

Sleeping Girl [Vermeer], 136

Slingeland, Pieter Cornelisz van, influenced
by Dou, 111, 126

Sortie of the Frans Banning Cock Com-
pany [Rembrandt), 77, 79

Spain, downfall of, 26

Spanish Fury, 22

Steen, Jan, 31; school, 39, 40; apprecia-
tion, 141; humor, 143; life, 144;
stories of reckless life, 145; A Homely
Scene, Fea.tt of St. Nicholas, Happy
Family, 145; The Christening Party.
While the Old Ones Sing the Young
Ones Pipe, Twelfth Night. The Prince's
Birthday, The Sick Lady. 146; Doctor
Visiting a Sick Young Woman, A
Doctor's Visit, 147; The Marriage at
Cana, Expulsion of Hagar, Disciples
at Emmaus. 148

Still-Iife, Dutch interest in, 31; Van
Heeni, Weenix, Kalf, Hondecoeter,
31, 38

Stoffels, Hendrickje, 78

Supper at Emmaus [Rembrandt], 82, 148

Swamp in the Wood [Jacob van Ruisdael],
199

Swanenburch, Jacob van, 41; teacher of
Rembrandt, 73

Symbolism, 95, 197, 200

Syndics of the Cloth Guild [Rembrandt],
56

Technique, as a motive, 28

Terborch, Gerard, 30; school, 39; pupil
of Hals, 99; appreciation, 127; life,
128 ; influence of Hals, Rembrandt,
and Velasquez, 128; portraits, 128;
color, 131; The Peace of Miinster,
127; The Gallant Soldier. 129; The
Concert, Officer Writing a Letter, Lady
Washing her Hands, Old Woman Peel-
ing Apples, 130

Tintoretto, 14

Titian, 14

Tobit and the Angel [Rembrandt], 172

Tulp, Dr., 76

Twelfth Night [Steen], 146

u

Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Landscape,

Seghers. 169
Union of Utrecht, 23
Utrecht, school of painting: Scovel, 16;

birthplace of Moreelse, 167; residence

of Scovel, 16; Moreelse, 167; Seghers,

170
Uylenborch, Saskia van, 77

[209:]

INDEX

Valckenborch, Lucas van, 107; apprecia-
tion, 126

Values, 134

Vanderbilt, W. K., collector, 104

Vegefable Market, The [Metsu], 118

Velasquez, 60 ; influenced Rembrandt, 93 :
Hals, 97

Velde, Adriaen van de, 31, 43, 178; ap-
preciation, 183, 196; Family of Van
de Telde, 183

Velde, Esaias van de, 39, 187

Velde, Willem van de, the Elder, 30, 184;
appreciation, 186

Velde, Willem van de, the Younger, 44 ;
appreciation, 186

Venne, Adriaen van de, 44

Vermeer, Johannes, 31; school, 41; life,
132; appreciation, 132; comparison
with Rembrandt, 133; plein-air, 170;
The Proposal. 134; Girl with Wafer-
Jug, 135, 139; Diana at her Toilet.
New Testament. Head of a Girl, Diana
and her Nymphs, 135: Sleeping Girl,
Tiew of Delft, 136: The Cook, 137;
The Letter. Yonng Woman Reading a
Letter. Lady with Pearl Neel-lace,
138; Lady with a Lute, Lady Writing.
The Lace-MaJcer, 139; The Coquette,
Lady at a Spinet, The Music Lesson,
The Artist in his Studio, 140; Portrait
of a Lady, 141

Veronese, Paolo, 14

Verschuier, Lieve, 185; Charles II Enter-
ing -Rotterdam, 186

Veth, Jan, 182

Vienna Art-History Museum, 107; A Lady
and her Doctor. Cavalier in a Shop,
Mieris, 124; Old Woman Peeling Ap-
ples, Terborch, 130: Gray-Bearded
Man, Flinck, 152; The Big Wood,
Ruisdael, 199

Vienna Imperial Art Museum: Moonlight
and Winter Landscapes, "Van der
Neer, 177: Landscape with Fence,
Jacob van Ruisdael, 199

View of Arnheim [Van Goyen], 188

View of Delft [Vermeer], 137

View of Dordrecht [Van Goyen], 188

View of Nimwegen [Van Goyen], 188
Visit, The [De Hooch], 138
Visit to the Nursery [Metsu], 119
Vlieger, Simon de, 34, 44; appreciation,

185
Vondel, Joost van den. Portrait of

[Koninck], 173
Vroom, Hendrick Cornelisz, 185

W

Wagner, quotation on art, 4

Wallace Collection: Winter Scene, Van

der Neer, 177; Landscape with Cattle,

Cuyp, 182
Water Mill [Hobbema], 191
Water Mill (Louvre) [Hobbema], 191
Watteau, 5

Weenix, Jan, '31; school, 38, 43
Westphalia, Treaty of, 46
When the Old Ones Sing the Young Ones

Pipe [Steen], 146
Whistler, 95
William, Prince of Orange, 8: resists

Spain, 21; price put on his head, 23;

offered the crown, 24: death, 25
William III of England, 47
Wine Contract, The [Eeckhout], 160
Witt, Johan de, 46

Woman Taken in Adultery [Eeckhout], 158
Wooded Landscape [Hobbema], 191
Wooded Road [Hobbema], 191
Wouwerman, Philips, 30, 174; school, 39;

pupil of Hals, 99, 178; appreciation,

180, 184, 195
Wynants, Jan, 30, 174, 175; school, 39,

43, 84

Young Bull, The [Potter], 179

Young Card-Players, The [Maes], 114,

116
Young Man and Girl in a Cellar [Dou],

113
young Mother, The [Dou], 103
Young Woman Reading a Letter [Ver-
meer], 138

[210]

.•0

RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
T0«-^ 202 Main Library

LOAN PERIOD 1
- HOME USE

2 3

4

5 6

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS

1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405

6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk

Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

[JUN^O^^^--

i6

REC CIS. JUN 1 2 1

38Z

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 12/80 BERKELEY, CA 94720

^?D3279slO)476B

fIB 22 1967 8 8-7

General Lib^

!

1

<:D3flESDllD

J

TiGGo

Vy

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRARY